Waterlooville-based Smart Video & Sensing Ltd has announced its trialling the latest radar from the smartmicro Premium series, the TRUGRD, on the Highways England Tunnel testbed in Southwick Hill Tunnel in Sussex.

SVS says the TRUGRD radar is an ultra high definition radar that can separate objects even in areas where vehicles are closely spaced which makes it ideal for tunnels. The forward firing radar measures parameters in a 4D – range, speed, azimuth and elevation angle. It can cover up to 12 traffic lanes in any direction at a range of up to 300m (984ft) and can detect 256 simultaneous objects or ‘targets’.

The company says that the device offers “easy to use programmability”, with every vehicle reported as a per vehicle record (PVR) and the radar can report speed, classification, count, gap, headway, wrong way vehicle and stopped vehicle.  

Peter Eccleson, Managing Director of SVS explained, “ Tunnel detection is not easy. Video is fine until there is dense smoke. Radar can provide a great deal of useful information to the tunnel operator especially during an incident like fire. Numbers of vehicles in the tunnel, types of vehicles, position of the incident, pedestrians out of vehicles are all available to the operator and the emergency services.” Results from TRUGRD will be evaluated independently over a three month period and the report submitted to Highways England. To date TRUGRD has proved very effective in detecting, counting and classifying traffic in the east-west bore of Southwick Tunnel over 2 live lanes. “  

Eccleson added that, at 212mm x 180mm in size and weighing in at only 1290g TRUGRD has no moving parts and is effectively maintenance free. “We will be installing other radars from the smartmicro range in the coming months including the TRUGRD STREAM with built in CCTV which has performed well in urban and interurban scenarios to date,” he concluded.

(Picture – SVS)