Axis P1465-LE monitors traffic in the new WBRC warehouse

The expansion of this English company has had strict planning conditions on the use of the roads surrounding its new warehouse, which has been solved with the installation of the P1465-LE cameras of Axis Communications.

Whitehill & Bordon Regeneration Company (WBRC), which was once home to the British Army's Defence School of Electronic and Mechanical Engineering, It has experienced great urban growth attracting many companies from the area.

To respond to this development, A new warehouse has been built from scratch, the size of a football field, distributed over four floors on a new extension of land, within walking distance of the original location of the company, While road access became a problem.

To the east, An important branch acts as the main entrance and exit of the new warehouse, allowing easy access for heavy vehicles, vans and cars and coaches transporting staff to the site. To the west is a narrower street, Mainly residential. Both roads are connected by a secondary link, for which WBRC is responsible.

Hampshire County Council imposed Planning constraints around traffic flow, mainly at the junction where residential and link roads join, as a condition for consent to the new warehouse.

To find a solution that meets security requirements, WBRC officials resorted to NW Security Group, company with which they had already collaborated on the smart city safety network and partner of Axis Communications.

"The solution had to be based on cameras, because WBRC was not only looking to count the number of vehicles, but also to collect information about them," he explains Frank Crouwel, CEO of NW Security Group-. They needed an accurate way to track how many cars had entered the intersection, how many had left, how many had turned left and the type of car that had passed in all directions. For such a seemingly simple project, this was quite a challenge".

NW Security Group's efforts were hampered by the design of the site surrounding the crossing, bordering trails and forests, which limited the final solution to the use of two cameras mounted on a single pole.

As Crouwel adds, "the desire for precision and, in particular, the need to monitor the use of the crossing at night, It meant we needed cameras that could cope with all light conditions and levels. We opted for the Axis P1465-LE bullet model, a reliable unit with excellent image quality".

Axis P1465-LE camera incorporates numerous smart features, included Lightfinder 2.0, that allows its Operating in extremely low light conditions and eliminates the need for additional lighting on the camera pole.

Chris Manning, WBRC Technical Project Director, he assures that "the night performance of the Axis camera is simply incredible. No difference in accuracy; has the same technical ability at night as during the day. It was vital that we had equipment with the optics, the right focus and ability to deal with different lighting conditions, and we got them".

Low-light performance wasn't the only reason the P1465-LE camera was chosen, The solution also called for the license plate recognition, which helped to compare individual vehicles and identify those that did not comply with the planning conditions.

To do this, NW Security Group contacted NVA Video Analytics, OCR technology specialists, that provided the Vaxtor app, An in-camera software solution that leverages the device's analytics and deep learning capabilities.

"The camera does basically everything," he says Frank Graham, Sales Director of NVA Video Analytics-. Use our Integrated OCR engine to identify the letters of the license plate and then works from there by leveraging analytical algorithms to identify the type of vehicle to which the license plate corresponds. This system does not use a lookup or connect to the DVLA; it's smart enough to determine the category of the vehicle on its own.".

The software solution was also a challenge, by the closed angle of the crossing and the position of the camera. NW Security Group engineers created a solution that identified an area of interest in the device's vision, but they found that the accuracy of the Axis cameras could also detect passing traffic.

By implementing a Detection limit whereby vehicles would have to be recognized in multiple subsequent frames, thus registering only those that move more slowly, and specifically seeking to detect license plates presented to the camera at an angle that would suggest a turn, The system can effectively catch all false positives.

Other articles on Axis, NVA Video Analytics, NW Security Group, Whitehill & Bordon Regeneration Company-WBRC