Computer Recognition Systems was founded in 1981, two years after a group of engineers developed the world's frst commercial license plate reader. Five years later, the company opened a US office in Massachusetts and began to serve the United States Machine Vision Market. In 1998 the company had directed their attention toward Machine Vision in the Industrial Transportation World and became a prominent member of ITS with their License Plate Reader. Some of the firsts in the machine vision ITS achieved by CRS are as follows

• First commercial License Plate Reader (LPR)1979
• First reader performing in-video license plate detection 1983
• First reader used for O/D surveys and journey time measurement 1989
• First use of machine vision for Traffic Surveys 1990
• First use of LPR for US Toll Enforcement 1995
• First security cordon based on LPR 1996
• First use of machine vision for HOV Enforcement 1997
• First use of High-Resolution in US ETC 1998
• First use of closed loop camera control for LPR 1998
• First high-resolution self-triggering LPR 2000
• First automated vehicle screening system 2001

Most recently, CRS has been involved with the City of London, England and its efforts to introduce congestion pricing. This system involves reading the license plate of every vehicle entering a designated area in the city and checking against a data base for authorization of that vehicle. Entry costs approx $8/day and is in effect from 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Initial reactions are very positive. CRS has over 800 camera systems involved in this project.

CRS has installed equipment on five continents and over twenty countries. The CRS installed base consists of over 3000 machine vision systems. CRS stands alone in terms of the range of transportation machine vision products, application experience, engineering resources, and track record. CRS customers benefit from almost 200 man-years of experience among our core group of six individuals. CRS resources cover the necessary disciplines of hardware, software, optics, mechanics and algorithms. For over twenty four years CRS has met the challenge of making systems work day and night, in environments ranging from New England winters, to hurricane season in the Bahamas, to the heat and humidity of summer in Singapore. Our products and the knowledge base of our engineers make machine vision work in the real transportation and industrial world, every day.

Computer Recognition Systems is an ISO 9002 company.