What is VMMR for Police?

VMMR (Vehicle Make and Model Recognition) is a technology complementary to ALPR, because is helps identifying all the important data about a vehicle, in particular its make, model and color.

How works VMMR algorithm

Vehicle make and model recognition (VMMR) is a key analyzer for automated vehicular surveillance (AVS) and other intelligent transport system (ITS) applications. Vehicle make and model has many applications like vehicle monitoring, intelligent parking systems, searching suspicious vehicles, electronic toll collection, autonomous vehicle systems, traffic analysis and so on. Another significant application of VMMR is vehicular surveillance in sensitive security premises; e.g., parking lots of airports, universities, stadiums and malls.

Use Cases: Tracking suspicious vehicles

The primary application of VMMR lies in law enforcement. Although ALPR systems can read license plates with ease and under difficult lighting conditions, there are several cases in which the ALPR systems are not enough. For example if the licese plate is unreadable, fake or stolen. In these cases following a suspicious car through surveillance cameras is impossible. However, with a VMMR system the combination of car model, make and color can be enough to allow for a tracking of the suspicious car or, at least, all of the car that coincide with that model, make and color. But it is better than the alternative.

Advantages of VMMR:

In police chases it can be of vital importance to have the fleeing car identified by any means necessary. If a number plate is not available, ar least VMMR provides some information that can be attached to the suspicious vehicle to allow tracking it through the available surveillance, traffic or helicopter cameras.

Thus, VMMR technology is a great help for law enforcement, providing a means of identifying vehicles even if the number plate is not visible, damaged or missing. Combined with ALPR it can also be used as a way offinding stolen cars, where the number plates have been swapped. This technology is integrated in Intelion.