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A COST-EFFECTIVE CAMERA and sensor system developed by three students from Kilkenny detects when drivers break red lights and sends a photo of their number plate directly to gardaí.
Muireann Greene, Annabel Campion and Faye De Breit of Coláiste Pobail Osraí, a gaelscoil in Kilkenny town, aimed to come up with a deterrent so that drivers think twice about pushing the accelerator when approaching a red light.
Their project is one of 550 exhibits from 225 schools competing for a range of prizes at this year’s BT Young Scientist and Technology event at the RDS in Dublin.
They came up with the idea after they experienced many drivers running red lights on their way to school. The group told The Journal that, sometimes, they had to jump back onto the path to avoid being hit.
Using a ‘raspberry pi’ – a small, single-circuit board computer – as well as a sensor, a small camera and python code, Greene, Campion and De Breit programmed their very own traffic camera for less than €200.
The small computer connects to the traffic light and arms itself, the camera and the sensor once it detects that red light has been turned on. Any car that passes by the sensor when the red light is on will have its image taken.
Green, Campion and De Breit programmed a short code – using information freely available online and using AI – that then stores the image in a database after automatically blurring any faces that may be in the picture.
The image is then immediately sent to a local garda station.
“I live beside a traffic light, opposite the school we went to,” Greene said. “There was a lot of incidents – where we’d even call the police – where people would be speeding, but there was nothing to catch their reg. There was no way of them tracking down.
“It was great when we came up with this because it was a way that we’d be able to catch them,” she added.
The group also conducted a survey of drivers in Kilkenny, finding that a small number of people had admitted to breaking a red light from time to time. Others said they had seen drivers run red lights while they were on the road.
During their research, the group stood beside a set of traffic lights in their local town for an hour and found that two drivers chose to run the red light.
All three plan to keep going with the project, and hope to help in some way towards the planned rollout of red-light cameras later this year. The group said they would ask more drivers about their behaviour, and iron out some technical difficulties.
More than 2,000 projects were submitted to this year’s Young Scientist, seeking a place on the exhibition floor at the RDS in Ballsbridge. Over the next three days, 85 judges will choose projects that will win one of the 200 prizes that are on offer.
Students are aiming to win the €7,500 grand prize of Young Scientist of the Year and other awards in their respective categories.
Members of the public can visit the exhibition from tomorrow and a number of acts will be hosted in the venue until Saturday. The overall winner, and some international awards, will be announced on Friday evening.
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Thank god we have eircodes
Amazon won’t be delivering with these in Ireland. They won’t even open an Irish store.
They are hiring people right now for a delivery operation in Blanchardstown
Who are they hiring? Drone operators?
And you think they will last long in America from being blasted out of the sky by the gun touting public.Be a great way for the kids to test their new machine guns.
Use parcel motel to get anything from UK that doesn’t deliver to Ireland like amazon. Great service
Is there an American version? Cheers
Family Guy, have they sorted out the customs charges and vat issues on that yet. Was looking into using MyUSA or a similar service but am worried about Revenue charging a bomb to have the package released. I believe if you keep the order to under 150 it’s ok….
@Rasputin: Are you actually asking if a commercial delivery-service provider have negotiated downwards Revenue’s tax ‘bomb’ on imports? No, of course they haven’t. Duty, usually at a rate of <4%, +23% VAT are payable on the combined cost of imported goods & shipping. So, if you want to grey import you need to ensure the foreign cost of goods plus the above charges are substantially below local cost to warrant the obvious limitation in terms of warrantee and backup.
Link? Are you sure?
Amazon don’t have stores…
More like slaves xD
Haha try dat
Baseball bat?
‘it’s illegal to have sex with them!’ Got it!
Call me old fashioned (many people do :) ) but I don’t fancy looking up at a skyline littered with bloody drones.
The future has arrived. Brilliant idea, hopefully the concept will actually work in the real world
I have no doubt that these will hit birds while they fly around or land. Can see dogs and cats attacking them too. Nice idea but there are going to be issues it is just a matter of how severe. If severe enough they will get banned.
I have nine cats and nine of them can fly, even when there’s a bird to catch as an incentive. Can’t see why a flying drone would be any different.
*none of them
I have two dogs and they have killed 8 birds in 4 months and they can’t fly either. Don’t know why it is a hard concept to grasp that drones have to land as delivery is the point.
Neighbour cat attacked my remote control helicopter when I was a kid. So all very possible.
I have a horse and he lives crashing into trees, can’t for the life of me see what could go wrong here!
“Sense-and-avoid” is fine but when it looses power gravity will kick in and I would not want to be underneath one.
I am sure though that much smarter minds than mine are working on it though.
Sense and avoid technology, is basically the drone senses something and avoids it, thanks for explaining it, because I hadn’t a clue what it meant.
These will never take off.
So in the future we will all live within 7.5 miles of an Amazon depot. The drones only have a range of 15 miles after all. And if this is the case wouldn’t a moped do just as well.
Limits on where they can fly, how far they can be from the operator etc, sorry Amazon but you are backing a loser on this one.
Sounds great but in reality, won’t be cost effective, too many possible dangers, I’m sure there will be some who would love to swipe them and launching in the land of “we’ll sue our mother for a Big Mac” – can only imagine what happens when one of these come within 20 get of a real person…
I’d bet my left nut we’ll never see amazon using these for deliveries. There’s far too many things that can go wrong
They keep droning on about this new technology but will their products fly off the shelves as anticipated?
have your say