Has your car been stolen? Someday in the not-too-distant future you might be thanking Mr. Roboto. A high tech OCR license plate reader is being used by various law enforcement agencies, including the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department who reports:

Using character-recognition technology developed for the Italian Post Office to read postal addresses, four robot eyes in the course of one night queried more than 12,000 license plates, recovered seven stolen cars and resulted in three arrests.

The official name for the machine is the The Moblie Plate Hunter 900 from Remington-Elsag Law Enforcement Systems. The robotic eyes can successfully capture and record license plates at 35 mph from almost anywhere on the road. The article further reports that there is a stationary version which can capture license plates at 75 mph. Yowsa!

I think this is a cool use of technology and will help deter car thieves and joy riders. Gets the nod from me. I hope they are using this in our area. Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto!