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Facet Technology Corporation

Facet Technology Corporation Completes Sign Inventory Project for Hennepin County, Minnesota Transportation Department

MINNEAPOLIS, MN, September 8, 1999— Facet Technology Corporation announced today the completion of a sign inventory service contract for the Hennepin County, Minnesota Transportation Department. The purpose of the project was to validate the capabilities of Facet’s revolutionary software product called SignFinder™. The Windows NT application performs automated object recognition and feature extraction for roadway signage and exports the results directly to a variety of asset management databases. By adding automation to the link between GPS-enabled video capture vans and asset management databases, cities, counties, and DOTs are able to realize lower costs, faster turnaround time, and increased accuracy.

“Our goal at Hennepin County Transportation Department is to get our yearly asset management costs down,” said Marc Simcox, Planning Analyst at Hennepin County. “Until now, no supplier has been able to approach our cost targets. Facet Technology Corporation has shown us the solution we need to achieve our cost goals.”

SignFinder™ is the first in what will become a full lineup of automated content-creation applications offered by Facet. “SignFinder™ removes the tedious actions from the content creation process, thus lowering costs, increasing accuracy, and saving time,” added Robert Laumeyer, Facet Technology Corporation Chief Technical Officer. “The patent pending recognition engine and precise measuring algorithms in SignFinder™ are hidden from the user by an intuitive, easy-to-use interface.”

Commenting on the pilot contract, Hennepin County Technical Coordinator Kevin Pieper stated, “SignFinder™ was able to automate the process of locating and computing the sign attributes we needed – especially the DMI data. Getting the GPS locations for signs is nice, but the sign distance from pre-defined nodes is what our maintenance crews really need. Having software that computes this distance is a big advantage.”

Regarding their future plans at Hennepin County, Pieper added, “The pilot project was structured as a service with Facet so we could verify the accuracy of their results. Our plan includes the possibility of bringing the SignFinder™ software directly to our engineering workstations for our year 2000 asset inventory project.”

About Facet Technology Corporation

Facet Technology Corporation is a growing company that is planning a suite of automated content-creation applications for the public works industry. SignFinder™, the company’s first product, will be utilized to fulfill service contracts for Departments of Transportation through the Spring of 2000. A licensed versioned of SignFinder™ for in-house use will be available in Summer of 2000. For more information, send inquiries to .