Mobile information specialist showcases portfolio of products at global telecoms show

30th June 2009 - APD Communications underlined its position as a global leader in mobile information, resource location/tracking and control room solutions at this year’s TETRA World Congress. At the show, APD showcased the latest additions to its portfolio; the new Mobile ID Unit document reader, the CORTEX Integrated Communications Control System and INCA vehicle location mapping system.

The new Mobile ID Unit provides police officers with an innovative handheld, self contained portable document scanner. Using the unit police officers can now check a person’s full name, date of birth, gender, nationality and document information including issuing county, number and expiry date in just seconds. This information is then formatted into a Police National Computer (PNC) query and the results displayed on the device’s screen. The new device provides officers with greater mobile functionality than ever before, including a smart card reader, fingerprint scanner and digital camera.

Drawing the crowds at TETRA World Congress was a fully interactive Control Room demonstration system, comprised of APD’s CORTEX Software Integrated Communications Control System and Steria’s STORM CAD system. APD’s CORTEX solution allows operator control of a range of communication systems through one simple and intuitive touch screen interface, such as telephony, intercom, analogue and TETRA radio, CCTV, web browsing and more.  The integration CORTEX offers to other systems, such as STORM, reduces incident response times and ensures accurate information is available to officers more quickly and efficiently by automatically providing incident details and coordinates and by allowing CORTEX communications to be controlled remotely by other systems.

APD also announced new Satellite Navigation integration for its INCA, GPS-enabled vehicle tracking and telematics unit. The new offering provides emergency service customers the combination of INCA and a Garmin sat nav in a vehicle installation for powerful and cost effective incident dispatch. New functionality permits officers to:

•   Store details of low priority incidents in the in-vehicle Garmin unit, increasing officer productivity
•   Select an incident/visit from the list and initiate navigation to the location
•   Receive information on high priority incidents on the Garmin unit with pre-emptive automatic initiation of navigation to the incident

“Our innovative technologies are changing the way policing is carried out across the world. Until now, police officers have had to rely on bulky, heavy devices which use a combination of technologies to carry out document checks; such as laptop computers and passport reading devices. The Mobile ID Unit changes everything. The CORTEX and INCA sat nav will help improve the efficiency of emergency services operators and front line police,” said Steve Denison, Managing Director of APD Communications.

Additional information on the Mobile ID Unit:
Functionality such as an iris scanner can be added to the Mobile ID Unit as required for the validation of biometric data held on travel documents. The device also has a fingerprint reader, an RFID scanner for e-passports, a smartcard (contact and contactless) reader for ID cards a 3.2 Megapixel  digital camera and a magnetic strip reader for credit cards. To prevent mis-scans the device has a motorised roller that pulls items such as passports through the scanning device.