Computer Vision News - May 2021

234 Computer Vision Application Dan Rossiter and David Chambers work at the Southwest Research Institute, where Dan is Assistant Programme Manager for the Transportation Technologies Programme and David is a Principal Engineer in the Perception Systems Section. They speak to us about Active-Vision, their exciting new anomaly detection software which has the power to revolutionize road safety. Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has been working with state departments of transportation extensively since the 1990s. Back then it was working in Texas and Florida; now, their transportation management software, ActiveITS , is operating in 13 U.S. states. ActiveITS is a centralised system that interfaces with a variety of devices on the highways, including cameras, traffic sensors, weather information systems, and digital signs to manage incidents through automated event management response. Active-Vision takes this one step further, providing actionable traffic condition analytics and insight to transportation agencies utilizing their existing infrastructure. These agencies own thousands of cameras along the roadways, but do not have enough operators to watch them all, so monitoring ends up being reactive rather than proactive. “A few years back there were some major dust storms along the I-10 Corridor in New Mexico,” Dan recalls. “The agencies were unaware so weren’t able to alert the public in time and there was a major pile-up with many vehicles and fatalities involved. That was kind of an eye-opener for us. We said, you know what, there are cameras down there, why can’t we be figuring this stuff out?” Active-Vision provides a proactive “… we’re identifying actionable data in real- time to allow these agencies to save lives!” Dan Rossiter