Motorola Inc. and PIPS Technology are releasing an innovative license plate reader technology to public safety organizations nationwide.
Called Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR), the technology installed in police cars "reads" vehicle plates as they enter the view of a vehicle-mounted or roadside infrared camera, and checks them against a database for nearly instantaneous identification. The system runs continuously, automatically capturing images of license plates with a camera that works in nearly every lighting condition.
"This technology is completely automated and built into the car's operation, so it requires no action on the part of the police officer to capture the plate numbers and have them verified. It is not something the officer has to initiate," said Steve Most, multimedia business director, Motorola radio systems division, in a statement.
Previous technologies required officers to manually type in a plate number and request a database search for each number, which can be time consuming and prone to errors.
Before bringing the ALPR system into Motorola's product portfolio, Motorola (Schaumburg, Ill.) worked with PIPS (Hampshire, U.K.) to further ruggedize its license plate technology to meet Motorola specifications for mission critical public safety communications in the United States.

Motorola unveils license plate readers