TrafficInfraTech Magazine Linking People Places & Progress
The adoption of technology in all aspects of road infrastructure management & road safety and pride in atmanirbharta were visible in every new offering at the Expo this year. Trafficinfratech spoke to a few enthusiastic exhibitors.
While the advantages of AI and ML were talking points, it was the ancient, ritual gathering at the Maha Kumbh Mela, drawing crores of devotees, that proved the testing ground for many of the technologies on display. Shailendra Kumar Singh, Vice President and BU Head – SSE Business, Vehant Technologies, and his team proved the mettle of its crowd management software (including fire detection, traffic control and surveillance) at Prayagraj.
Vehant Technologies, a 20-year-old company incubated at IIT Delhi with an aim to developing security solutions on vision and computer-based technologies, began working on Under Vehicle Surveillance Systems and within a year, the first UVSS unit was developed and sold in India. The need then came to create a database of vehicles and in order to corelate that data with a unique identification number, ANPR was developed.
“In 2019 we began working on a new, vast and robust platform, OKEAN (Ocean in Greek) – an AI-powered, modular and fully integrated video intelligence
platform designed to bring unified situational awareness, scalable operations and intelligent decision making across surveillance, traffic and analytics ecosystems – which had humungous potential for multiple Use Cases that could be developed.
“Before the Maha Kumbh mela project came to us, we did a trailer at the Magh Mela 2024 at Prayagraj to understand crowd density, count of people coming in, how many at the ghat, how to control them, have better planning etc. and we were able to capture a lot of learnings in terms of understanding the environment, the field and ground reality in terms of what we had to capture and what was the required outcome. We did lot of customisation and redevelopment in the product based on these learnings.
“There is an NDA which talks about crowd management. X number of people within a given metre area gives you a yellow alert, Y number of people gives an orange alert and Z number of people gives a red alert (implying a stampede). Police squads with cameras for crowd detection, validation and similar information forwarded the data to our teams who converted them into technical inputs. The objective was to understand crowd behaviour. All teams viewed the alerts at the Command-and- Control Centre. Collaboration between all units was very good and the system functioned flawlessly for over three months. We had 100% redundancy and met all customer expectations.
“We have been participating in the Expo every year. Exhibitors expect to know technology trends moving forward, which direction the industry is going or should go and how government policies are shifting.”
CCTVs and 3D Perception
Sanjeev Sehgal, Founder and Managing Director, Sparsh CCTV and team also had the Maha Kumbh Mela experience to improve their product mettle. “We are an indigenously grown CCTV company and were instrumental in designing the first CCTV cameras in India in 2008. Every product of ours has been designed, developed and manufactured here.
“We do CCTV cameras across all verticals including highways, traffic monitoring, smart cities, tunnels and tunnel security. Our cameras are on expressways, airports and at critical infrastructure including power grids, Oil and Gas. We do everything that goes along with CCTV cameras such as software, video management, video analytics, control command centre and SCADA integration.
“Our marquee projects include the Katra to Srinagar railway line, Chenab bridge, the Udhampur to Baramulla rail project, the Ayodhya temple inauguration and the Maha Kumbh Mela. Our cameras were installed across all railway stations in Ayodhya city, the seven entry points and 25 parking lots. At Prayagraj too, we were across all railway stations with real-time monitoring. On both occasions we developed the control room in the Rail Bhavan minister’s office with everything designed, developed and manufactured in India.
“Our latest technology is 3D perception in traffic management and enforcement. With stringent privacy laws expected, the same can be protected using 3D perception without optical image till violation is detected. This is where the world will move in the next level of surveillance and CCTV cameras. We also have sniffer dog cameras which are heat-resistant and light-weight.
“Torches with camera for face recognition where ten thousand faces of suspects can be stored on the edge of the device is another exhibit. The torch will vibrate if the suspect is spotted and at the same time send a message to the control room with the identity and location of the suspect. We are currently doing a CSR project in Delhi to identify children who are begging on the streets, to match their faces with those of reported missing children.”
Power Computing
Voluminous data access needs high-end computing power at the back-end and Madhusudan Bhor, Founder & CEO, Vantageo Private Limited, builds products such as enterprise servers, storage, networking switches, AI and GPU platforms and various other data centre solutions to address mission-critical applications and demanding workloads. “Our company is head-quartered at Thane and we have R&D centres and operations across Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Pune. We are a startup founded in 2020. We make high-end products such as server with x86 architecture – Intel and AMD-based – used at data centres by banks, government, research institutes, manufacturing and pharma.
“Traffic and mobility need high-end computing and power and that is exactly where our servers are engaged. There is huge dependency to have such powerful servers in the background and we have solutions designed towards resolving various business and infrastructure-related backend issues. Our target audience in this Expo has been software companies and system integrators who come with the need for an underlying hardware infrastructure to create a solution and take it to a customer. The end customer maybe the government but our primary engagement is with the solution or service provider with whom we have to create a collective solution.
“Today data is a gold mine and there are some products and categories created which can bring in more policy-oriented decisions for the customer with the government regulating and streamlining its usage. Therefore, the backend has to be more powerful and demanding as data requirement is instant and real-time. Though there are more American, Japanese and Chinese players in this space, we decided to build our own stack and it took us almost 3 ½ years of engineering & R&D to build and launch our product. With the product designed and manufactured in India, the cost factor is going to be an advantage.”
Camera with brain
It looked like a smaller version of the Bofors artillery gun, but Larry Kaura, Managing Director, Photonplay Systems representing MobilarisV at the expo assured us it was a mobile, trolley-mounted camera. “MobilarisV is into AI technologies, specifically into highway and road transport. We are here with a new technology: cameras with a brain. They have in-built radars and intelligence and unlike regular cameras which can only see, these cameras can make decisions and penalise violators without any human intervention.
“These cameras are equipped with high-end engines so they can move in real-time from video to violation using multiple sensors like radar and lidar. Combining all this information, the camera is able to issue a challan for any violation such as tripling on a motorcycle, no helmets or no seatbelt.
“Due to the resolution, efficiency and impact of these cameras and the technology, they are able to detect if the driver is holding a glass of wine while driving. This has never been seen till now and we are proud to bring this technology in India. There is usually a 50% chance that a challan will be issued for a violation but we are here to ensure every violator is penalised. We are awaiting certification and are currently doing POCs of trial periods of three to six months.
“In Tamil Nadu we did an exercise where, over a 500 mtr. stretch of road, there were 400 fatalities recorded per year. The local police were fed up. We set up two gantries – one at the start of the black spot and one in the middle. At the start was a VMS mounted with cameras and radar which said ‘Please SLOW DOWN’ to over-speeding vehicles. Details of the vehicle such as speed, number plate and number of passengers were recorded. When the vehicle passed the second gantry, 160 mtrs. from the first point, the VMS there displayed the speed and the number plate of the vehicle along with an alert.”
Adaptive traffic signaling
Abhinav Agarwal, Founder, Futops Technologies, had come to the expo with Microtrans as the partner in smart hardware. “Microtrans is a pioneer in the traffic industry with 15 years in India in traffic signaling and video management. As offshoots, our major focus has been on the software side, video analytics, computer vision-based traffic enforcement, safety and security solutions. We have already proven these in Japan and globally and in India we are partnering with Microtrans for expanding our presence.
“Some officers have requested us for demo of adaptive traffic signaling which is based on optimizing traffic flow. We received some good enquiry on that and it could be a game changer. It has already started in bits and pieces with pilots and I see that space in India. The Japan investment has definitely been a strategic investment from our side. We have introduced adaptive traffic signaling and adaptive pedestrian crossing as new products in the expo this year.”
CCR Solutions
Mustufa Hararwala, Director – Drita Technologies Pvt Ltd, specialises in command-and-control room solutions. “A control room is a visualisation tool for decision making or operations management. The data availability visualisation is required on a large screen setup.
“We manufacture products such as video wall controllers and the wall management software which allows customers to view content coming from data, network and surveillance. Everything is integrated on one hardware and software platform and we throw it on the screen setup.
“We have deployments in airports, railways, NHAI highways and we have done a lot of defense projects for the armed forces and DRDO. Marquee projects
include Mumbai International airport where we have done six control rooms as a collaborative solution. The CEO can access the information on his laptop and can also annotate and chat with users in the control room which makes it real-time. What we have done is brought all the data, including baggage handling, SOC, engineering and maintenance, internal BMS applications and more than 40 applications on the air, land and terminal sides to be put on one screen.
“We can stream images from a normal mobile camera of an incident on the runway directly into the command centre. We have created a VPN through which even those away from the command centre can access data. We work with Adani, GMR and AAI. The railways signaling system command centre in Samastipur – Bihar, the Prayagraj command centre for the Maha Kumbh mela, the Ram Mandir command centre, the Atal Setu Mumbai CC and Zojila tunnel monitoring are our marquee projects.
“At this expo we have gone one step ahead and incorporated AI into visualisation. Our USP is that we are an Indian company and our product has been designed and developed in India.
“This is our third year in the Expo. We get exposure here, the visitor profile is very strong – we get to meet not only the decision makers but also to understand what is required in the industry. We go back and develop Use Cases and include them in our profile.”
Reflective Tapes
Road safety was another crucial focus at the expo and Rohit Sharma, General Manager – Reflective Division, Panamax and team were there to exhibit their vast range of high-quality reflective tapes. “We are manufacturing more than 350 types of tapes such as floor marking, sun protection and red polyester tissue tape. We are supplying to all major OEMs in India. The newly launched reflective products are Type 4 sheeting, Type 11 DG, engineering grade and Cross BB tape which we are supplying pan India to every RTO. Our product comes with a seven to 10-year reflectivity warranty.
“Reflective tapes are used at the time of fitness of commercial vehicles and is mandatory to use. The procedure is carried out by every RTO. Three colour-tapes are affixed on the vehicle – red on the rear, yellow on the sides and white in the front.
“The tapes are affixed for road safety purposes. For road signages – HIP (high density prismatic), DG (diamond grade) and EG (engineering grade) tapes are used. Major colours for road signages are green, yellow, white and red. Characteristics of tapes include pattern, quality and reflectivity with no water, oil or dust penetration.”
“At the Expo, we have received good leads which we shall convert in the coming months and days. This is our first year and we are highly impressed with this exhibition and will be back next year.”
Galvanisation and Poles
Sanjay Bhammidimarri, Director – Lysaght Taperline Poles Pvt Ltd is appraised with the latest techniques which help him deliver to the customer based on their requirements. “We are a Singapore-based group and our company is a leading manufacturer and supplier of metal beam crash barrier systems. We are also the leading manufacturer and supplier of octagonal poles including mini mast, high mast, stadium mast, flag mast and signage mast.
“Galvanisation is our USP, so is the quality of our product which looks white and fresh. We offer no warranty as it depends on how the client handles the product. For any galvanized product, the most important aspect is storage. We do the lighting of roads, highways and airports. Manufacturing is in India and so is our galvanisation plant.
Crash barriers
Kartikey Garg Business Development Head, DKY Sales Pvt Ltd said “Our company specialises in the manufacturing of crash barriers: W-beam, tri-beam and highway guard rails and we provide galvanising services too on job-work basis for our products. Types of crash barriers include W-type for the railways for the high-speed Vande Bharat tracks, two rail-type, tri-beam used mainly in the hilly areas and end sections for the corners. We have indirectly supplied to PWD UP, PWD Uttarakhand, NHAI and the Ganga Expressway via concessionaires.
“We maintain our quality and local clients. We have done our own crash testing and have acquired NATRAX certification. Our products have 25 years guarantee if there are no crashes.”
Motorcycle Protection System
Vikrant Raina, Deputy General Manager, Avantech Engineering Consortiums Pvt Ltd. Has introduced the motorcycle protection system or MPS at this year’s expo. “We are always talking about four wheelers, but no one considers two wheelers. We have the MPS which is crash-tested as per the EN 137 (NATRAX has commenced development testing of crash barrier as per European standard EN 137) standard. We are in the process of getting approval from the Indian Road Congress so the specifications can be drafted and posted in the IRC guidelines which contractors can use. Unless and until it is promoted by MoRTH or IRC, nobody is going to adopt it.
“Accidents can happen anywhere. Sometimes the bikes skid and go down the gorge. When someone crashes a two-wheeler, the biker is hit but using the MPS, his life can be saved. The Motorcyclist Protection Rail is a protective enhancement installed on existing four-wheel vehicle restraint systems to reduce the chances of serious injury to motorcyclists and pillion passengers in run-off-road accidents.
“The design consists of an under-riding rail which is mounted on a bracket. Upon impacting this rail, the bracket deflects back absorbing some of the impact energy from the motorcyclist, whilst the rail contains and re-directs the motorcyclist away from the rigid posts and hazard.”
QR Vehicles
A key attraction at the expo was a stall with glamourous SUVs raring to hit the road. Kuren Amin, Managing Director – DHI Mobility Pvt Ltd, and his team were dealers for Isuzu and other car brands. “We build vehicles and give mobility solutions to defense, homeland and certain industrial applications with traffic being our forte. The cars are built around the requirements of traffic management – interceptors, speed cameras, pilot vehicles, VVIP vehicles and troop movement solutions with QR (Quick Response).
“The traffic rescue vehicles which, in an accident, have the equipment to cut through the metal to get the victim out of the car and oxygen cylinders, stretchers and medical equipment to quickly help someone in need.
“Quick Rescue vehicles are equipped with more than 50 tools and are of two types: DRF which is used now on national highways and bought by local governments. DRF helps in floods, landslides etc., mainly post operative. The other is a speed interceptor which helps in tracking speed and is a revenue generating vehicle. There is also a troop movement vehicle which can reach the spot as quickly as possible carrying 11 passengers. It acts as a pilot vehicle running in front of cars carrying VVIPs.
“We are first timers at the Expo. It gives us a chance to meet people from all states. We met visitors from UP, Rajasthan.”
Parking Solutions
A key aspect of mobility is parking and Santhosh Kumar, Head Product Area – Region India, Mobility Platform and Services, Bosch, spoke about challenges and solutions in regulated parking environments. “We set up this business for solving mobility-related challenges. We looked at the entire lifecycle of the vehicle and thought that as a century old company in India, how could we contribute to the mobility space.
“Mobility is seen only from the aspect of movement, of goods and people and not as assets such as warehouses and parking. We wanted to create a platform which would solve this problem holistically. We realized there are many solutions already available and what was required was sustenance and scalability. That’s how we created Logistic Operating system.
“Multiple solutions can come together on this O/s and we can do service orchestration. Park Zeus is a parking management system and we have created a platform where everything is available as one bundle. The solution has a physical infrastructure and IoT where you can install sensors and cameras to get vehicle and parking-related data. Identification can be based on RFID or corporate identity card. India as a country can scale up only if we collaborate.
“Larger steel plants and ports also need to know if the vehicles are moving at an even speed. Just a parking solution may not be sufficient, you have to connect it with violation detection (over speeding, over stay). Commercial parking has to be integrated with payment solutions like FasTag. Parking is like Lego blocks. You need hundred pieces which need to be stitched in a way to create and curate the solution specific to that application. We have deployed this solution at Tech parks, ports, airports and some commercial places.
“This is only for organised parking. We do not have a solution for unorganized parking as yet. Though technology is available the issue is, how do we scale it? It needs a policy and a related technology framework with improved public transport and last mile connectivity.
“ The Trafficinfratech Expo is India’s leading platform for innovation in traffic management, smart mobility and urban infrastructure. With policymakers, smart city officials and mobility innovators in attendance, the event offers a powerful opportunity to demonstrate our capability and strengthen brand visibility.”
