Large Scale Display Systems for Traffic Management and Surveillance
The growing volume of traffic and transportation, not only in industrialised countries but also in developing economies, has led to an increasing requirement for traffic management and surveillance. More traffic on roads, highways and railways require more tunnels, more bridges, more junctions, or in other words: places were accidents are more likely to happen. In order to cope with the problems and dangers rising with this development, new traffic control rooms have been installed all around the world. Traffic surveillance itself has shifted from the mere watching of camera signals on CRT monitor walls towards the interactive display of various signal types on large video walls in modern control rooms. These large scale video wall systems are the core of today’s traffic control rooms. Software developers have produced many useful tools, such as automatic licence plate recognition, traffic flow measurement, and other telematics related tools. But there is hardly any sense in deploying all these, if you cannot display their information to all operators in the control room.
State-of-the-art display technology for control rooms
Times when large screen systems were just CRT monitors stacked on top of each other are definitely over. The question which display technology to choose depends on several decisive criteria. Reliability of the system in long-term operation is a “conditio sine qua non” for display solutions in control rooms. Other factors that have to be considered are the best possible image quality, ergonomic viewing, economic costs and the type and number of the connected signal sources. Technologies that do not create gaps which disturb the displayed image are therefore preferred. Normal projectors are not suitable for control room applications since the quality of the projected image strongly depends on the lighting conditions. So called “seamless” Plasma monitors are likely to suffer from burn-in effects and ghost-images with static image content. Most modern control room applications rely on DLP™-technology based rear-projection units, so called “cubes”, for their video walls. This technology has many advantages which makes it the best solution available at the moment. The cubes are available in many different sizes and resolutions. They can be stacked to build up video walls of almost any size. Thanks to their way of construction there are almost no gaps between adjacent cubes. This allows scaling and positioning of windows independently from the borders of the individual units of a wall.
Their main disadvantage is the depth of the cubes and an additional required space behind the video wall which has to remain for maintenance. Some manufacturers have solved this problem with front-maintenance options.
Liquid crystal-based video walls were rarely used for large screen systems in the past because of the wide gaps in-between the individual displays of a “tiled” video wall. When putting common LC displays together the resulting gap measured up to ten centimetres. Now providers of control room display solutions have developed professional LC displays which offer the outstanding image characteristics of the technology and at the same time create only minimal gaps in a combined large screen. Thanks to their advantages concerning space requirement, costs and display quality they have become a considerable alternative to DLP™-cubes. Whether you choose rear-projection, which is still the leading technology for control rooms, or LC displays for a control room depends on the money available and the size of the room, which also determines the viewing distances and angles for the operators.
Diversity of Signals
Today’s traffic management centres have to handle many different signal types from a multitude of sources: analogue and digital video camera signals, traffic management software applications, incoming alarms from emergency services, and many more. Most sources in traffic control room are definitely video signals from surveillance cameras. These signals can be transmitted as RGB, DVI or as streaming video signals via IP networks. The inputs for the large screen systems are usually provided by the corresponding graphics controller. Besides the connectivity, the device creates the coherent desktop surface on the large screen elements. These graphics controllers use high-end processors and graphic chips to handle the huge data masses created through the video signals. The controllers, as well as further server units should be placed in separate server rooms, since the necessary ventilation may create annoying noise emissions.
Video streams using IP networks have been a challenge for large screen systems in the past, because there are often different camera types, different encoders, and different stream formats in use, all of which have to be integrated to the system. But using IP networks for transmission of camera signal is a practical and cost-efficient method, so industry reacted and today there are input boards available for graphic controllers which can handle these various streams.
All of these sources named above have to be connected to the large screen system. They have to be displayed, either constantly or on demand, and they have to be controllable.
Modern large screen systems provide very helpful software tools to operate the entire system. Incoming alarm signals or alarm messages from other software applications are automatically displayed in a predefined position and size on the video wall. Even certain automated reactions can be part of these presets. These possibilities increase the efficiency and the working ergonomics of the system tremendously. The operators in the control room do not have to watch the camera signals permanently since they will be alerted as soon as something happens.
Sophisticated Planning and Complete Solutions
Many control rooms in the world suffer from mistakes made during the planning of the installation or refurbishment. There are so many things that have to be considered when equipping a control room that it is worth relying professional solutions to avoid later failures in operation. The large screen system is only one piece of this puzzle which plays a decisive role being the core of the installation. Its reliable operation is most likely when the complete system comes from one provider, since this reduces problems of incompatibility to a minimum. But for a perfect operation of a control room it is extremely important that all integrated systems and components interact as perfect, and as efficient as possible. The installed furniture and technological hardware has to fulfil certain ergonomic criteria to enable useful deployment of the entire installation. Ambitious control room installations are well coordinated compositions of furniture, large screen systems, hardware and software, and facility related equipment such as room layout, lighting conditions and air conditioning. If these aspects are taken into calculation from the beginning, the control room serves its purpose best, and makes traffic more safe and comfortable.
The growing volume of traffic and transportation, not only in industrialised countries but also in developing economies, has led to an increasing requirement for traffic management and surveillance. More traffic on roads, highways and railways require more tunnels, more bridges, more junctions, or in other words: places were accidents are more likely to happen. In order to cope with the problems and dangers rising with this development, new traffic control rooms have been installed all around the world. Traffic surveillance itself has shifted from the mere watching of camera signals on CRT monitor walls towards the interactive display of various signal types on large video walls in modern control rooms. These large scale video wall systems are the core of today’s traffic control rooms. Software developers have produced many useful tools, such as automatic licence plate recognition, traffic flow measurement, and other telematics related tools. But there is hardly any sense in deploying all these, if you cannot display their information to all operators in the control room.
State-of-the-art display technology for control rooms
Times when large screen systems were just CRT monitors stacked on top of each other are definitely over. The question which display technology to choose depends on several decisive criteria. Reliability of the system in long-term operation is a “conditio sine qua non” for display solutions in control rooms. Other factors that have to be considered are the best possible image quality, ergonomic viewing, economic costs and the type and number of the connected signal sources. Technologies that do not create gaps which disturb the displayed image are therefore preferred. Normal projectors are not suitable for control room applications since the quality of the projected image strongly depends on the lighting conditions. So called “seamless” Plasma monitors are likely to suffer from burn-in effects and ghost-images with static image content. Most modern control room applications rely on DLP™-technology based rear-projection units, so called “cubes”, for their video walls. This technology has many advantages which makes it the best solution available at the moment. The cubes are available in many different sizes and resolutions. They can be stacked to build up video walls of almost any size. Thanks to their way of construction there are almost no gaps between adjacent cubes. This allows scaling and positioning of windows independently from the borders of the individual units of a wall.
Their main disadvantage is the depth of the cubes and an additional required space behind the video wall which has to remain for maintenance. Some manufacturers have solved this problem with front-maintenance options.
Liquid crystal-based video walls were rarely used for large screen systems in the past because of the wide gaps in-between the individual displays of a “tiled” video wall. When putting common LC displays together the resulting gap measured up to ten centimetres. Now providers of control room display solutions have developed professional LC displays which offer the outstanding image characteristics of the technology and at the same time create only minimal gaps in a combined large screen. Thanks to their advantages concerning space requirement, costs and display quality they have become a considerable alternative to DLP™-cubes. Whether you choose rear-projection, which is still the leading technology for control rooms, or LC displays for a control room depends on the money available and the size of the room, which also determines the viewing distances and angles for the operators.
Diversity of Signals
Today’s traffic management centres have to handle many different signal types from a multitude of sources: analogue and digital video camera signals, traffic management software applications, incoming alarms from emergency services, and many more. Most sources in traffic control room are definitely video signals from surveillance cameras. These signals can be transmitted as RGB, DVI or as streaming video signals via IP networks. The inputs for the large screen systems are usually provided by the corresponding graphics controller. Besides the connectivity, the device creates the coherent desktop surface on the large screen elements. These graphics controllers use high-end processors and graphic chips to handle the huge data masses created through the video signals. The controllers, as well as further server units should be placed in separate server rooms, since the necessary ventilation may create annoying noise emissions.
Video streams using IP networks have been a challenge for large screen systems in the past, because there are often different camera types, different encoders, and different stream formats in use, all of which have to be integrated to the system. But using IP networks for transmission of camera signal is a practical and cost-efficient method, so industry reacted and today there are input boards available for graphic controllers which can handle these various streams.
All of these sources named above have to be connected to the large screen system. They have to be displayed, either constantly or on demand, and they have to be controllable.
Modern large screen systems provide very helpful software tools to operate the entire system. Incoming alarm signals or alarm messages from other software applications are automatically displayed in a predefined position and size on the video wall. Even certain automated reactions can be part of these presets. These possibilities increase the efficiency and the working ergonomics of the system tremendously. The operators in the control room do not have to watch the camera signals permanently since they will be alerted as soon as something happens.
Sophisticated Planning and Complete Solutions
Many control rooms in the world suffer from mistakes made during the planning of the installation or refurbishment. There are so many things that have to be considered when equipping a control room that it is worth relying professional solutions to avoid later failures in operation. The large screen system is only one piece of this puzzle which plays a decisive role being the core of the installation. Its reliable operation is most likely when the complete system comes from one provider, since this reduces problems of incompatibility to a minimum. But for a perfect operation of a control room it is extremely important that all integrated systems and components interact as perfect, and as efficient as possible. The installed furniture and technological hardware has to fulfil certain ergonomic criteria to enable useful deployment of the entire installation. Ambitious control room installations are well coordinated compositions of furniture, large screen systems, hardware and software, and facility related equipment such as room layout, lighting conditions and air conditioning. If these aspects are taken into calculation from the beginning, the control room serves its purpose best, and makes traffic more safe and comfortable.
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