Abstract: A system for optically detecting vehicles traveling a road having a plurality lanes. The system includes a gantry provided at the road so as to straddle the plurality lanes. There are a plurality of optical line sensors provided on the gantry, for obtaining linear images of a surface of the road. There are optical line sensors arranged in two rows and in a staggered pattern such that each has a view field overlapping the view field of either adjacent optical line sensor by the sum of half the view field and a width of a motor cycle, photoelectric sensor apparatus consisting of photo-projector elements and photo-detector elements and optical axes which are parallel to each other and are substantially located in the position of the view field of the optical line sensors.

Abstract: The object of the present invention is to accurately detect vehicles even under special conditions where vehicles go side by side, a motorcycle passes another vehicle in a traffic jam, or a shadow is cast on the road surface. The vehicle detecting system comprises a one dimension CCD camera 2 mounted above a road surface so as to provide one dimension light amount signal in the lane width direction from above the road surface and intermittent markings 6 disposed in the field of view of the one dimension CCD camera. When a vehicle 3 enters the field of view of the one dimension CCD camera 2, the modulation of one dimension light amount signal is disturbed. Therefore, a signal processing device 5 detects the vehicle on the basis of the output signal of the one dimension CCD camera 2 by checking the disturbance of modulation.

Abstract: A circuit for reading a toll road ticket in which a mark for magnetic recording density discrimination formed on a ticket is detected and a magnetic record demodulating circuit is selected in accordance with the result of detection. The circuit is a digital recording circuit and reproducing circuit for a magnetic card utilizing modified frequency modulation. In a toll receiving system of a toll road, coexistence of tickets adopting different magnetic recording densities or recording systems is made possible.

Abstract: A method for reading information from a toll road ticket in which a mark indicating magnetic recording density is formed on a ticket and is detected. A magnetic record demodulating circuit is selected in accordance with the result of detection. Further, a conversion method for increasing a recording capacity of a ticket is provided.

Abstract: A coin discriminator discriminates a genuine coin from a counterfeit on the basis of a real component and an imaginary component of an impedance of the coin produced from a high frequency alternating current bridge circuit and decides an amount of the coin when the coin is genuine. An automatic balancing circuit having a sufficiently long time constant is employed to detect variations in the real component and the imaginary component of the impedance due to insertion of the coin. Whether the coin is genuine or counterfeit is discriminated on the basis of peak values of both variations and when the coin is genuine, an amount of the coin is decided.

Abstract: In a coin discriminator which compares a reference value to impedance magnitude variations induced by a coin, a phase detector detects the phases of the impedance variations and compares them with a standard to discriminate between the coins.

Abstract: An automatic toll-ticket issuing apparatus includes a vehicle-type identification unit for identifying the type of each oncoming vehicle, a toll-ticket issuing unit installed ahead of the identification unit along the vehicle path, and a vehicle-start detector installed farther ahead of the issuing unit. The toll-ticket issuing unit has a plurality of toll-ticket issuing slots open at different heights, and it holds a stack of new, unused toll tickets. Further, the issuing unit can feed the tickets one by one out of a hopper, and it can record the vehicle-type information, interchange number, and other necessary information on each ticket being fed. The recorded tickets are sequentially transported each to an issuing slot at the height determined in response to the vehicle-type information from the vehicle-type identification unit, and any ticket left unpulled from any issuing slot by any driver can be retrieved in response to vehicle passage information.

Abstract: A toll road terminal machine having dual functions as a transit ticket issuing machine at an entrance gate and as a transit ticket verifying machine at an exit gate includes: a main conveyor section provided with a magnetic read/write head assembly for writing on and reading from a magnetic recording zone of a transit ticket and a printer for printing on a printing zone of the same transit ticket; the machine also includes a joining conveyor section for conveying either a transit ticket fed from a transit ticket hopper or a transit ticket inserted into an insertion port to the main conveyor section, and a separating conveyor section for conveying a transit ticket fed from said main conveyor section either to a stacker or to an ejection port.