IIT Delhi invents smart traffic monitoring system to control over speeding

IIT Delhi

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi has installed a Smart Traffic Monitoring System in its campus since the last month through which speeding vehicles are identified through a camera which detects name plates, and a warning message is delivered to the drivers. The campus has also put in place Smart Notice Boards – digital boards where notices are filtered according to the target audience.

“We have put in place these traffic monitoring systems installed with a mechanism which identifies cars which are speeding. As of now there is one camera placed near the hospital which collects this data. If the car belongs to our teachers or students, they get an SMS alerting them they have been found speeding,” Deputy Director (Strategy & Planning) M Balakrishnan said on Wednesday.

He was speaking at the press preview of IIT Delhi’s first ever Industry Day which is to be held on September 23. The event is being organised in order to encourage collaboration between industry and academia, and will see projects and discussions on five themes – environment, defence, affordable healthcare, smart cities and energy.

Projects and innovations such as Smart Traffic Monitoring System and Smart Notice Boards will be on showcase in the event which will see the presence of important personalities such V K Saraswat from NITI Aayog, Industrialist Kumal Mangalam Birla and Nuclear Scientists Anil Kakodkar.

The Smart Traffic Monitoring System has been developed in collaboration with Vehant Technologies – a start up by an IIT alumnus. Elaborating on the same, Balakrishanan said, “As of now we have just one camera installed near the IIT hospital which collects all this data, but we want to expand it over time. Since we can’t send SMSes to cab drivers, their numbers simply flash on a board near the main gate, to make them aware.”

“Similarly the notice boards are also a new initiative; we have seven of them till now. There is a central server where people have to deposit all their notices, and those then get picked up by devices in the other boards. They’re filtered in the sense that if it’s a notice pertaining to hostels, it will be displayed only in that area. The notices keep rotating, and are automatically deleted once the event is over,” said Balakrishnan.

Apart from this posters and projects on waste water management, conversion of coal to methanol for energy, development of affordable biotech medicines and soft armour development would also be showcased on Industry Day.