RTA to install robots to make 33,000 licence plates daily
The Roads and Transport Authority has integrated a robot-operated vehicle registration plate maker in Dubai.
The fully-automated machine can produce 33,000 plates per day.
It applies the Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies and artificial intelligence applications to print registration plates without human intervention, state news agency Wam reported.
RTA will install 10 similar machines at service provider centres that will be controlled via the authority’s central factory.
German company Tonnjes designed and produced the world’s first fully-automated licence plate production, in which a robot receives electronic printing orders via the e-licensing system.
The system then tracks the life cycle of the registration plate from manufacturing to scrapping via a QR code attached to the plate.
Each manufacturing unit can produce 350 to 700 plates per hour – one plate per 15 seconds. The machines can automatically print six different types of plates at a time, with a zero-margin error rate.
This is a marked difference from the older systems, which could only produce 3,000 plates per day or would take two minutes to print out one registration plate.
In February, Tonnjes said it would invest over €1 million (Dh4.1m) in the construction of a new production plant for vehicle licence plates in the Senegal capital, Dakar.
The specialist manufacturer of security licence plates and radio-frequency identification-based vehicle identification systems has also formed a long-term collaboration with Gemalto, a French software company and systems integrator.
The company will be operating in Dakar for the next 10 years under the name Afriplaque, producing and supplying blank plates in the local area.
Gemalto, working with local partner Face Technologies, signed a multiyear concession agreement with the Senegalese Ministry of Infrastructure, Land Transport and Disruption.