JP2000259872A - Automatic toll collection system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To enable an ETC vehicle to smoothly pass through a tollgate and also to detect a non-ETC vehicle which tries to pass the tollgate without paying the toll by identifying whether a vehicle arriving at the tollgate is an ETC or non-ETC vehicle, detecting the position of the arriving vehicle and photographing the non-ETC vehicle. SOLUTION: The position of a vehicle arrived at an ETC lane of a tollgate is measured by a radar device 20, and a control processor 21 calculates the estimated arriving direction of radio waves when these waves are transmitted from an on-vehicle device 4 and received by a radio wave azimuth detector 22 as long as the arrived vehicle is an ETC vehicle and then gives a transmitting instruction to a radio device 6. Then the detector 22 detects the arrived direction of the radio waves which are transmitted from the device 4. If the difference between the detected arriving direction of radio waves and the estimated one is included in an allowable range, it is decided that the arrived vehicle is an ETC vehicle and the processor 21 performs the ETC processing. Meanwhile, it is decided that the arrived vehicle is a non-ETC vehicle if no radio waves are received from the device 4 or the difference between the said two arriving directions is not included in the allowable range and the image is picked up by the image pick up device 23.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an automatic toll collection system for automatically collecting usage fees of a road from a vehicle traveling on a toll road by wireless communication. When the vehicle arrives at the lane corresponding to only the vehicle that has it, its position is detected,
Further, the present invention proposes a system having a function of acquiring vehicle information when the vehicle is passed.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, on a toll road, a magnetic card type toll collection system has been introduced. This system is described in, for example, Toshiba Review, Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 189-192, “Magnetic Card System Toll Collection System”, or Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Technical Report VOL. 22N
O. 8 (1985-11), pages 127 to 132, "System Technology in Magnetic Card Type Toll Collection Machine".

In such a conventional system, when entering a toll road from a general road, or conversely, when exiting from a toll road to a general road, it is inevitable to temporarily stop at a toll booth and receive a toll ticket. It is necessary to pay a fee, and therefore, many vehicles are often congested in a line in front of the toll booth. In order to solve such a problem, an automatic toll collection system (hereinafter referred to as ETC: ElectricToll) capable of collecting tolls without stopping at a tollgate for some time.
Collection is abbreviated. ) Has been proposed.

For such a system, for example,
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Technical Report VOL. 32 NO. 4 (1995-
7) P264-267, "Needs and Technical Development in Highway Traffic Management Systems"
-508492 "Electric vehicle toll collection device and method"
And so on.

FIG. 6 is an external view showing an entire conventional automatic toll collection system, FIG. 7 is a schematic diagram showing a basic configuration of each device of the conventional system, and FIG. 8 is a configuration showing a specific configuration of each device of the conventional system. FIG.

In FIG. 6, reference numeral 1 denotes a tollgate. The tollgate 1 detects that a vehicle (ETC vehicle) 3 equipped with an on-vehicle device 2 has arrived at a lane 4 by means of a vehicle detector 5. 2 and the wireless device 6 to communicate with each other to exchange information regarding toll collection. The information relating to the toll collection is processed (ETC processing) by the control processing unit 7.
Raises the circuit breaker, and the vehicle 3 passes through the tollgate 1. if,
If the in-vehicle device 2 is not mounted on the vehicle 3, the toll collection by the wireless communication is not performed, and the toll collection is performed at the clearing counter 9 by a cash or a prepaid card. FIG. 7 is a block diagram showing the basic configuration of such an automatic toll collection system.

Next, the operation of the conventional automatic toll collection system will be described in more detail. In FIG. 8, the light emitting unit 10 and the light receiving unit 11 are respectively arranged facing both sides of the ETC lane 8, and the light emitted from the light emitting unit 10 is
, And is received. When the vehicle arrives at the ETC lane 4 and passes between the light emitting unit 10 and the light receiving unit 11, the light is blocked, the light receiving level at the light receiving unit 11 is reduced, and the presence of the vehicle is determined by the vehicle presence / absence determining unit 12. Is detected. Receiving this, the ETC vehicle determination unit 13 instructs the transmission / reception unit 14 to transmit a radio wave based on a predetermined protocol, and the radio wave is transmitted from the antenna 15. When the arriving vehicle is an ETC vehicle, communication with the vehicle-mounted device 2 is established, and the ETC processing unit 16 performs ETC processing.
The processing is performed, and at the same time, the breaker control unit 17 instructs the breaker drive unit 18 to raise the breaker 19. If the arriving vehicle is not an ETC vehicle,
Communication is not established because of the absence of the
Remains down.

[0008]

In a conventional automatic toll collection system, a vehicle equipped with an on-vehicle device (ETC vehicle)
And non-ETC vehicles are allowed to coexist, and each lane has a width that allows only one vehicle to pass. As a result, a smooth flow of vehicles is obstructed, and improvement of traffic congestion, which is one of the purposes of the automatic toll collection system, is hindered.

Further, in order to improve the above-mentioned problem, E
If an ETC lane dedicated to TC vehicles is provided and the blocking device is abolished in that ETC lane, it is possible for non-ETC vehicles to pass through the ETC lane without paying a fee,
There was a risk that the fairness of toll collection would be hindered.

[0010] Further, even for an ETC vehicle, it is not possible to restrict the passage of a vehicle that does not correctly collect tolls, which may hinder fairness of toll collection.

An automatic toll collection system according to the present invention has been made in order to solve the above-described problems, and enables a vehicle (ETC vehicle) capable of supporting the automatic toll collection system to pass through a tollgate smoothly. It is possible to detect a vehicle (non-ETC vehicle) that does not support the automatic toll collection system and tries to pass through the ETC lane without paying a fee.

[0012]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An automatic toll collection system according to a first aspect of the present invention identifies a vehicle arriving at a tollgate as an ETC vehicle or a non-ETC vehicle, detects the position of the vehicle, and detects the position of the vehicle. This is for imaging an ETC vehicle.

The automatic toll collection system of the second invention tracks the position of a vehicle arriving at a tollgate until the vehicle completes the toll collection process.

[0014]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Embodiment 1 FIG. 1 is an external view showing an entire automatic toll collection system according to the first embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram showing a basic configuration of each device of the present invention, and FIG. 3 shows the first embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 4 is a configuration diagram showing a specific configuration of each device of the present invention. FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram for describing a radio wave arrival direction prediction method.

The operation of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. 1, 2 and 3. Reference numeral 1 denotes a tollgate. The tollgate continuously checks whether or not the vehicle has arrived at the ETC lane 4 by the radar device 20 (S1, S2), and performs ET.
When the vehicle arrives at the C lane 4, the vehicle position is measured by the radar device 20 (S3). From the position information and the known device installation dimensions, the control processor 21 determines the direction of arrival of the radio wave when the radio wave transmitted from the on-vehicle device 2 is received by the radio wave direction detector 22 when the vehicle is an ETC vehicle. A predicted value is calculated (S4), and the wireless device 6
Is instructed to transmit (S5). Next, the radio wave direction detection device 22 checks whether a radio wave from the on-vehicle device 2 has been received, and if so, detects the direction of arrival of the radio wave. It is confirmed in the control processing device 21 whether or not it is within (S6). If it is within the allowable range, the incoming vehicle is
It is determined that the vehicle is a car, and ETC processing is performed in the control processing device 21 (S7). Also, if the radio wave direction detecting device 22 does not receive the radio wave from the vehicle-mounted device 2, or
Even if received, the direction of arrival of the radio wave is detected, and if the difference from the predicted value is out of the allowable range, the arriving vehicle is a non-ETC.
It is determined that the vehicle is a car (S8), and an image is taken by the imaging device 23 (S9).

Next, the operation of the present invention will be described in more detail. In FIG. 4, a high-frequency modulation signal output from the transmitter 24 is partially output by the power distribution unit 25 to the frequency conversion unit 26 as a local oscillation signal, and the remainder is output as a transmission signal to the antenna 27a. Radio waves are transmitted. If a vehicle exists in the ETC lane 4, a reflected wave from the vehicle is received by the antenna 27b and output to the frequency conversion unit 26. The frequency converter 26 generates a signal (beat signal) having a frequency difference between the received signal and the local oscillation signal, and outputs the signal to the receiver 28. The receiving unit 2
In step 8, the beat signal is amplified, A / D converted, and output to the distance / direction calculation unit 29. Further, the radar device 20
Has a beam directing means 30 that mechanically changes the direction of the antenna, or that can change the directivity of the beam electronically by configuring the antennas 27a and 27b as element antennas, The beam directing means 3
0 indicates the current beam pointing direction in the distance / direction calculating unit 29.
Output to The distance / direction calculation unit 29 calculates the distance to the vehicle by applying signal processing such as an FET to the beat signal and outputs the distance to the vehicle to the direction prediction unit 31. The direction is calculated as the vehicle direction and output to the direction prediction unit 31. The direction predicting unit 31 determines that the vehicle has arrived at ETC lane 4 by ET.
In addition to notifying the C-car determination unit 32, when the vehicle is equipped with the vehicle-mounted device 2, the radio wave direction detection device 22 calculates an expected arrival direction of the radio wave and outputs the calculated direction to the ETC vehicle determination unit 32. . The ETC vehicle determining unit 32 includes the transmitting / receiving unit 1
4 is instructed to transmit radio waves based on a predetermined protocol, and the radio waves are transmitted from the antenna 15. When the arriving vehicle is an ETC vehicle, the vehicle-mounted device 2
Communication is established between. The signal transmitted from the vehicle-mounted device 2 is transmitted to an antenna 33 disposed at a specific distance.
a and 33b, respectively, and
a and 34b. The receiving units 34a and 34b perform necessary processing such as amplification and filtering on these received signals and output the signals to the phase difference detecting unit 35. The phase difference detector 35 detects a phase difference between the signals received by the antennas 33a and 33b and outputs the detected signal to a direction calculator 36. The direction calculation unit 36 calculates a radio wave arrival direction from the phase difference between the two received waves and the arrangement interval of the antennas 33a and 33b, and outputs the direction to the ETC vehicle determination unit 32.
In the ETC vehicle determination unit 32, the direction prediction unit 31
Is compared with the predicted radio wave arrival direction input from the direction calculation unit 36. If the comparison result is within the allowable error, it is determined that the vehicle is an ETC vehicle, and the ETC processing is performed between the on-vehicle device 2 and the ETC processing unit 16 via the wireless device 6. If the comparison result is not within the allowable error, or if the ETC
In the case where the arrival of the vehicle and the position of the vehicle are notified from the direction prediction unit 31 in the vehicle determination unit 32, but the arrival direction of the radio wave is not input within a predetermined time after the arrival of the vehicle, the vehicle arrives. Vehicle is non-ETC
It is determined that the vehicle is a car, and an imaging instruction and vehicle position information detected by the radar device 20 are output to the imaging control unit 37. The imaging control unit 37 outputs an imaging instruction to the camera 38 and the illumination 39 of the imaging device 23 at the position most suitable for imaging the non-ETC vehicle from the input vehicle position information.

The configuration of the radar device 20 described in the preceding section shows a case where the FM-CW radar device is applied.
The principle of measurement by the FM-CW radar device is described in, for example, S.M.
A. Hovanessian's author, Radar S
systemDesign & Analysis ”(Art
ech House publication) P. 78-P. 81. The configuration of the radio wave direction detecting device 22 described in the preceding section shows a case where an interferometer system is applied. The principle of the interferometer system is described in, for example, Radar Technology (published by the Institute of Electronics and Communication Engineers) 294-P.
295 "Interferometer system".

Next, a method of estimating the direction of arrival of a radio wave in the direction estimating unit 31 will be described with reference to FIG. 20 is a radar device, 22 is a radio wave direction detecting device, and 20 and 22 are installed on a support (not shown), and the dimension L of the installation interval is known. (A) is a view of these devices and the like as viewed from above, and (b) is an ET equipped with the vehicle-mounted device 2.
FIG. 3 is a diagram viewed from a left lateral direction with respect to a traveling direction of a car C. The transmission wave 40 transmitted from the radar device 20 is reflected by the ETC vehicle 3, and the reflected wave 41 is received by the radar device 20, so that the distance M from the radar device 20 to the ETC vehicle 3 is determined. You can know. Further, by directing the radio wave 40 transmitted from the radar device 20, the radar device 20
And the angular position relationship between the vehicle and the ETC vehicle 3 can be known. The angle at which the radar device 20 looks into the ETC vehicle 3 with respect to the direction perpendicular to the antenna surface of the radar device 20 is α, the component in the horizontal plane is β, and the component in the vertical plane is β. At this time, the ETC vehicle 3 is
In order to determine that the vehicle is a car, the radio wave direction detector 22 receives a transmission wave 42 from the vehicle-mounted device 2 with respect to a direction perpendicular to the antenna surface of the radar device 20 on a horizontal plane. The component θ needs to satisfy Equation 1.

[0019]

(Equation 1)

Embodiment 2 FIG. 1 is an external view showing an entire automatic toll collection system according to a second embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram showing a basic configuration of each device of the present invention, and a specific configuration of each device of the present invention. The configuration is shown in FIG.
The description of these drawings is the same as in the first embodiment. Also,
FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing the second embodiment.

In FIG. 6, the processing from S1 to S6 is performed in the same manner as in the first embodiment. The position of the vehicle determined to be an ETC vehicle is tracked by the radar device 20 until the ETC process ends (S10). For an ETC vehicle, an ETC process is performed between the on-vehicle device 2 and the control processing device 21 via the wireless device 6 (S7). On this occasion,
When the toll collection is not performed normally due to a failure of the vehicle-mounted device or a shortage of the toll balance in the case of the prepaid system (S11), an image of the unpaid vehicle is taken (S9). At the time of imaging, the control processing device 21
From the vehicle position tracking information by the radar device 20,
The imaging is instructed to the imaging device 23 located at the position most suitable for imaging the unpaid vehicle. Processing for a vehicle determined to be a non-ETC vehicle (S8, S9)
Is the same as in the first embodiment.

[0022]

According to the first and second aspects of the present invention, a radar device for detecting a vehicle position, a radio wave direction detecting device for detecting a position of a vehicle-mounted wireless device, and an arbitrary vehicle from the vehicle position and the vehicle-mounted wireless device position By providing a control processing device for detecting the presence / absence of the in-vehicle wireless device and an image pickup device for picking up an image of a non-ETC vehicle, it is possible to suppress the arrival of the non-ETC vehicle to the ETC lane and thereby alleviate congestion.

Further, by suppressing the non-ETC vehicle from passing through the ETC lane without paying a fee, there is an effect of guaranteeing fairness of toll collection.

In addition, by cracking down on ETC vehicles that cannot normally collect tolls, there is an effect of guaranteeing fairness of toll collection.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an external view showing an entire system to which the present invention is applied.

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram showing a basic configuration of each device of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a configuration diagram showing a specific configuration of each device of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram for explaining a radio wave arrival direction prediction method.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing Embodiment 2 of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is an external view showing an entire conventional automatic toll collection system.

FIG. 8 is a schematic diagram showing a basic configuration of each device of a conventional automatic toll collection system.

FIG. 9 is a configuration diagram illustrating a specific configuration of each device of a conventional automatic toll collection system.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 Toll booth, 2 onboard device, 3 vehicle with onboard device,
4 ETC lane, 5 vehicle detector, 6 wireless device, 7
Control processor, 8 Stopper, 9 Clearing counter, 10 Light emitting section, 11 Light receiving section, 12 Vehicle presence / absence determining section, 13 ET
C car judgment unit, 14 transmission / reception unit, 15 antenna, 16
ETC processing unit, 17 blocker control unit, 18 circuit breaker driving unit, 19 circuit breaker, 20 radar device, 21 control processing device, 22 radio wave direction detection device, 23 imaging device, 24
Oscillator, 25 power distribution unit, 26 frequency conversion unit, 2
7 antenna, 28 reception unit, 29 distance / direction calculation unit, 30 beam directing means, 31 direction prediction unit, 32
ETC vehicle determination unit, 33 antenna, 34 reception unit, 35
Phase difference detection unit, 36 direction calculation unit, 37 imaging control unit, 38 camera, 39 illumination, 40 transmission wave from radar device, 41 reflected wave from vehicle, 42 transmission wave from onboard unit.

Claims (2)

[Claims] An automatic toll collection system for exchanging information on toll collection between a tollgate on a toll road and an on-vehicle device mounted on a vehicle running on the toll road, wherein the vehicle arriving at the tollgate A radar device that detects the position of the vehicle, a radio wave direction detection device that receives a radio wave transmitted from the on-vehicle device and detects the direction of the radio wave, and a radar device and a radio wave direction detection device that arrive at a tollgate based on the detection contents of the radio wave direction detection device. An automatic toll collection system, comprising: a control processing device having a function of detecting whether or not a vehicle-mounted device is mounted on a vehicle to be mounted, and an imaging device for photographing a vehicle without the vehicle-mounted device. 2. An automatic toll collection system for exchanging information on toll collection between a tollgate on a toll road and an on-vehicle device mounted on a vehicle running on the toll road. A radar device that detects a position and tracks the position of the vehicle until the vehicle normally completes the toll collection process, and a vehicle without an onboard device or a vehicle with an onboard device mounted but performs the toll collection process normally. An automatic toll collection system, comprising: an imaging device for photographing a vehicle that did not exist.