Automation in transport permeates the 21st century, facing a paradigm shift in India,leading to advancements in the video analytics and image processing sector.The increased reliability of automation in surveillance has paved the way for Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) applications. These applications promise to put a curb to the drastic escalation in a broad spectrum of offenses such as accidents, crime rates, terror attacks and traffic rule defaulters. To reduce the growing incidents of crime and the number of fatalities occurring year on year, this technology has been installed globally with India gradually catching up to its advantages. But unlike other countries, India accounts fora vast population inclusive of myriad types of vehicles with no uniformity in traffic, irregular landscape, low lighting conditions and a gamut of options available for number plates. Moreover, cars and other such vehicles position them selves back-to-back in traffic hindering in the ANPR process. This makes it a much harder process to apprehend violators fleeing the scene or traversing the open streets without the fear of the law. Konnet ViAn, a Pune headquartered software development company, comes to the fore with an innovative and robust ViAnANPR solution. This comprehensive solution constitutes of specific cameras and IR illuminators that addresses low lighting issues, which can be detrimental in some cases. Additionally, the ViAnANPR software tackles the number plate variety impediment. Adjusting the proximity between the placement of the camera and the vehicles position resolves the inability to captur enumber plates due to traffic congestions. This solution comes with the option of storing the photograph of the driver and other pertinent information in the database. This data can then be used to corroborate it against government or police watch lists, which has proved to be a more than useful asset for the organizations.

Konnet Solutions, the parent company, incepted in 1992, leverages industry rich experience to specialize in computer networking, being a leading system integrator of Cisco Systems. The company believes that while most software companies in India are service based organizations that do outsourced jobs, Konnet ViAn have immersed them selves into developing cutting-edge products instead. Another group company, Konnet Intersec, extends its services in access management, surveillance and energy conservation. In conjunction with this, Konnet ViAn focuses on research and development innovative software solutions based on video content analysis. The technical team led by Dr.Seva Nimkar Panda (Ph.D) has been successful in generating complete solutions in the Home-land Security and Process Automation sectors. IDTS(Innovative Driving Test System),ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) and RLVD (Red LightViolation Detection)have been state das the signature products. The ANPR product is an offering of a suite of solutions; ANPR-SIM -WINDOWS based ANPR ENGINE and LINUX based ANPR ENGINE, VIAN

AN-X–Outdoor Edge Device and SMARTANPR - Mobile App.

To reign in the challenges set off by two wheelers, SMART ANPR was launched; the solution was designed using handheld devices, an android based smart phone with an in-built flash and camera. It was engineered due to the inherent limitations of stationary cameras, and the growing threat of two wheelers that are parked on the road side. Similar workings of the four wheeler ANPR application, it works on the video captured by the device. Using this app, the law enforcement personnel can validate the vehicle number plates with the suspicious or hot listed registered numbers.

The Founder and managing director of konnet group of companies balkrishna ( Raju) kondalkar postulates

Generating Skilled Drivers
The number of accidents occurring in India it self has resulted in a proliferation of fatalities. Last year alone, India grieved over the loss of close to 140000 lives that ended in anaccident with many more succumbing to injuries. This can be attributed to inept drivers on the roads. The Innovative Driving Test System(IDTS) by Konnet helps mitigate this problem. IDTS, built under the guidance of CIRT (Central Institute of Road Transport) and the KonnetViAn team, is software that assesses a person’s driving capabilities based on scientific and methodical evaluation to reduce driving errors. Post an exhaustive research, a state-of-the art advanced system comprising of six tests inclusive of an eight shaped track, an H shaped track and so on were designed. This system tracks the trajectory of the vehicles in real-time ,and computes the deviation from the standard specified expert path. It also calculates the score of the driver from the configured test parameters with accuracy.

The USP of this system is that it is non-intrusive, implying that there is no human intervention and no additional hardware to be fitted on the vehicle. Additionally, delineators or any similar hardware which are highly maintenance prone, are not used inthis system. Assimilating this test in-depth, it has a range of parameters that have to be adhered to; monitoring of forward direction, reverse direction, actual ground distance moved and time taken to calculate average speed and number of kerb hits. The foundation of IDTS lies on the automation application software,wherein advanced image processing and video analytic algorithms are used to analyze the performance of the driver. The performance is substantiated by multiple fixed IP cameras mounted above the test track. The app displays and stores the results post the completion of the test for the duration of six months. The video recording, test history and scores, can be easily retrieved with the candidates registration ID ensuring complete transparency making the test applications wide scale adoption a compelling concept.

Anticipating a Bright Future
Konnet group, growing at a CAGR of almost 40 percent, firmly believes that India is on the road to development and will soon adopt these groundbreaking technologies on an increased pace in the next five to ten years. The team, with its vast experience of the products being implemented across the globe,has already braced themselves for the future by perfectly arming themselves with the company’s futuristic products. The Founder and Managing Director of Konnet Group of Companies, Balkrishna

(Raju) Kondalkar postulates IoT is digitalizing the economy and society at a rapid pace with the expectation of drones playing an active role, evidently in the consumer and retail sector. Drones essentially depend a great deal on video analytics. Raju reveals, “We are researching on video analytics for drones. Video analytics will be an essential part of IoT and is going to play a vital part inthe success of IoT.” Konnet under its ViAn brand continues to strive to develop optimal leading edge products and solutions in the field of video analytics.

Making the Streets Safer Partnering With Renowned Organizations
Pune ranks as one of the highest in the accidental death rate in India each year. In an attempt to scale down that number, IDTS was deployed at Pune in the CIRT campus in November 2014 which was inaugurated by Mr. Nitin Gadkari (Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Govt. of India). The Regional Transport Offices (RTO) of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad have put the system to use since March 2015 reporting more than 100,000 tests being conducted till date on the system.

Research states that, during the initial adoption of the test, more than 30 percent of the candidates were found unsuccessful at clearing it. However, over time and with perseverance, candidates are training more assiduously for the test on the same track on holidays, which is made available by CIRT to driving schools for a nominal fee. The test assures that only candidates qualified to drive are handed the driving licenses. Abhay Damle (Joint Secretary - Union ministry of road transport and highways, Ex-Director CIRT) was quoted as saying, “The beauty of the system is that it is following the concept of Tsquare, that is, it is tough and at the same time it is transparent. And it would help in propagating the idea of a good driving license testing system which is transparent and trust-worthy and would help in reducing the fatalities on the road, which is a very noble cause.”

Partnering With Renowned Organizations
In partnership with Wipro Infotech, ANPR was deployed at the Commercial Check Tax Post Jharkhand, India:

• Integrated with Com-Tax Database of State Government.
• Used for Real Time Validation of Transport Permit.
Collaborated with Cisco India in setting up ANPR at Toll Plaza-Navi Mumbai, India:
• Integrated with Cisco VMS and Cisco Cameras.
• Analysis done at Central Command and Control.

Worked with FAAC Automation to launch ANPR at Akshardham Temple Delhi, India exercised for:
• Parking Management.
• Real Time Validation of hot listed vehicles

Enforcing Traffic Discipline
Addressing the chaos generated by congestions caused by traffic, Konnet solutions have devised the Red Light Violation Detection (RLVD) system. A software based system, it uses video analytics as its core technology and optical character recognition (OCR) on images for recognition to detect and flag off signal violations by vehicles at junctions. RLVD eradicates any unwanted text in the captured image while OCR converts the text on the extracted number plate into alpha-numeric characters and stores it in the database. The systems are connected via TCP/IP to the central traffic control room of that city. Challans are generated and the evidence is verified centrally before dispatching them to the violators. A backup of all the data and videos is catalogued for future audits.