Development of Overweight Vehicle Enforcement System Using Piezoelectric Sensors Combined with License Plate Recognition System

Kemas Ahmad Zamhari 1, Ignatius Agung Wibowo 2 , Mohd Ezree Abdullah1

Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia 86400 Parit Raja, Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia Tel: +607-4537312, Fax: +607-4536070, E-mail: kemas@uthm.edu.my Faculty of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia 86400 Parit Raja, Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia Tel: +607-4537556, Fax: +607-4536060, E-mail: agung@uthm.edu.my
2 1

Abstract
Overweight vehicle results in premature deterioration of the road pavement and associated increases in roadway maintenance costs. Fixed weigh stations, with sometimes restricted and often predictable hours of operation and vehicle capacity limitations, are often successfully avoided by overweight vehicle. Therefore, attempts have been made to build an automatic system to recognise the overweight vehicle moving in a highway. This paper discusses the development of the overweight vehicle enforcement system from technological aspect. Basically the system is the integration of two systems i.e., moving vehicle weight measurement and vehicle license plate recognition system. At high speed, the accuracy will reduce. Therefore, a new system should be developed to improve the system so that the weighing can be performed at high speed with a better accuracy. Besides, the system should be able to screen the overloaded vehicle, record its weight and snap its picture for further law enforcement. This kind of system is classified as a part of Intelligent Transport System (ITS). The demand of such a product in the world is high due to the increase of number of heavy vehicles and the limited public fund for road maintenance. In addition, the data obtained by this system can be used for many purposes in road and railway system. Applications may include cost-effective road pavement design, planning and maintenance; traffic law enforcement; predicting level of pollution in tunnels based on actual vehicle weights [1]. The existing WIM systems generally consist of four elements. First is the road component which consists of detectors to check for the vehicle presence as well as the vehicle speed, a WIM scale, and a height detector. Secondly is the computer component which consists of a computer, display, and printer. Next is the signaling component which consists of a control assembly, directional signals, and variable message signal. Lastly, the tracking component which consists of a series of inductive loops [2]. The performance of different WIM technology depends on the application, environment, cost, and accuracy. The weight sensor used in the WIM system can be

Keywords:
Weigh In Motion (WIM), License Plate Recognition (LPR), road pavement.

Introduction
Weigh-In-Motion (WIM) is a system, which is able to weigh a moving vehicle. It has been developed for many years in many countries to protect the road pavement and reduce manpower in weigh monitoring sector. It is a strategic investment in pavement maintenance management because road pavement is vulnerable to traffic loading conditions. The effect of axle load on the rate of road deterioration is to follow the law of fourth power, for example, doubling the axle weight will create 16 times as much road damages. Although the government has already created a regulation to control the maximum allowable weight that can be carried on a vehicle's axle, however many lorry drivers violate the regulation. Increasing the axle weight of vehicles will add pressure and accelerate wear on roadways. To control and prevent the violation of the axle weight regulation, the government has built several weighing station in well-suited locations. Usually, the weighing is performed randomly at a fix weighing station. This method is not effective because there is a high possibility that some overweight vehicles escape. Even though WIM has been developed for years, most of the systems operate at relatively low speed.

piezoelectric, bending plate, load cell or the most recent sensor is fiber optic. The basic construction of the typical piezoelectric sensor consists of a copper strand, surrounded by a piezoelectric material, which is covered by a copper sheath. When a pressure is applied to the piezoelectric material, an electrical charge is produced. The sensor is actually embedded in the pavement and the load is transferred through the pavement. The characteristics of the pavement will therefore affect the output signal. The sensor can be used to measure the weight of a passing tyre or axle group by measuring and analyzing the charge produced [3] Implementation of a bending plate system could be either portable or permanent depending on the application. The dynamic load is calculated using the strain reading when a vehicle travels over the plates. Static load is determined by using the calibration procedures and the measurement of the dynamic load. Bending plate systems can contain either one or two scales placed in the travel lanes perpendicular to the direction of travel. When two scales are used, each scale is placed adjacent to each other to cover a lane. The bending plate scale is typically installed in a lane with two inductive loops and an axle sensor to provide vehicle length and axle spacing information. The load cell system consists of two weighing platforms placed adjacent to each other to fully cover a normal traffic lane. A single hydraulic load cell is installed at the center of each platform to measure the force applied to the scale. The load measurements are recorded and analyzed by the system electronics such as strain gauges to determine the tyre and axle loads. A fiber optic sensor is made of two metal strips welded around an optical fiber. The sensor principle uses induced photo-elastic properties in glass fiber under a vertical compressive force. This induces separation in two propagating modes as a faster vertical mode and a slower horizontal mode. The pressure transferred to the optical fiber creates a phase shift between both polarization modes, which is directly related to the load on the fiber [4].

violated vehicle. The image is then entered to the computer through the image data acquisition device. In the computer the image is processed to obtain the plate number data. The plate number together with weight data of the violated vehicle is then recorded and sent to a remote station for further enforcement.

Force measurement Signal conditioning Data acquisition Force data processing Weight data Violated vehicle data

Image capture

Image Data acquisition

Computer
Image recognition

Recording

Remote station

Figure 1 Block diagram of WIM system

Algorithm for dynamic weight data estimation

The weight of the vehicle is estimated from the force data using an algorithm based on RBF neural network by using two set of data input and one set of data output. These two input data for this network are WIM weight data and speed data and static weight data as an output data. The structure for estimation dynamic weight based on RBF neural network is shown in Figure 2.

Force data

RBF Neural Network

Output

Weight Adaptation Algorithm

Error +

System Development
As shown in Figure 1, the system basically consists of two major subsystems, i.e. force measurement and image recognition. The force due to vehicle weight is measured using piezoelectric sensors. A signal conditioning is required so that the output of the piezoelectric sensor match with the input level of the data acquisition system. The force data are then processed in a computer and converted into vehicle weight data. When the weight data is higher than the setup for overweight value then the computer will send a trigger to a camera to capture the plate number of the

Static weight data

Figure 2 Structure of dynamic weight data

estimation based on RBF

The RBF training process is as follows: Step 1 Pre-process the training data and test data, Initialize and create the RBF network Step 2 Train the RBF network Step 3 Load the test data, make estimations and compute the test error

Step 4 Go to step 3 until error is small enough.

System Installation
The whole system has been installed in the road inside UTHM main campus at Parit Raja Johor. The piezoelectric sensor was inserted properly within the asphalt (Figure 5). In order to facilitate the experiment, all of the instruments are set up close to the sensors location. Figure 6 shows the instruments during the experiment.

License Plate Recognition System

The system consists of a CCTV camera, a controller, image data acquisition system and a computer. The plate recognition process is illustrated in the following flowchart:

TRIGGER SIGNAL TO VEHICLE RECOGNITION SYSTEM

DETECTED OVERWEIGHT? GRAB VEHICLE IMAGE N

A VEHICLE MOVE TROUGH A WEIGHING BRIDGE AT NORMAL SPEED (5-80)

PROCESS IMAGE, RECOGNIZE VEHICLE PLATE NUMBER

Figure 3 Flowchart of license plate recognition process Any overweight axle load will trigger the camera through the controller. The image will be sent to the computer through the image data acquisition system. The computer will process the image as such so that plate licence will be isolated. Using the neural network method, the alphanumeric characters on the plate will be recognised. Figure 4 illustrates the user interface of the system.

Figure 5 Installation of piezoelectric sensor on the road

Figure 6 Components of weight measurement system

Typical output
After a number of trials, it is evidenced that the weigh in motion system is able to produce the signal which indicate the passing axle load. The algorithm will calculate the weight accordingly. The calibration of the system will be conducted in the very near future.

Figure 4 User interface of license plate recognition system

Acknowledgement
The authors thank MOSTI for providing Sciencefund research grant Vot. No. S005 for conducting this project.

References
[1] G. Yannis, C. Antoniou, Integration of Weigh-in-Motion Technologies in Road Infrastructure Management, in: Institute of Transportation Engineers. ITE Journal, 2005 [2] J. Laurita., G. Sellner, D. DuPlessis, Weigh-In-Motion Technology Improves Highway Truck Weight Regulation., Public Works, 41-42, 1994 [3] R. Bushman, A.J. Pratt, Weigh-In-Motion Technology-Economics and Performance, in: the North American Travel Monitoring Exhibition and Conference, Charlotte, NC, USA, 1998 [4] G. Arturo, The Development of Accurate Methods for Weighing Trucks in Motion, Ph.D. Thesis, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, 2001