Development of Laser Range-Imaging Vehicle Sensor

Laser range finder technology-based three-dimensional vehicle profile and size measurements are useful for vehicle detection and classification in electronic toll collection (ETC). First this paper briefly makes a comparative study of conventional vehicle detectors employing range measurement technologies to summarize the requirements for vehicle classification in ETC. Secondly two overseas laser range vehicle profilers are presented as typical examples of the ETC application. Newly developed laser range finder to classify vehicles for domestic ETC is also introduced. The developed sensor successfully acquired the shapes of vehicles in detail and measure the both of height and width of them with sufficient accuracies for toll collection at actual tollgate.