ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

JURY DOCUMENT

TOPIC: AI IN NUMBER PLATE RECOGNITION

Submitted to- Jury Panel

Submitted by- Vibhav Sharnagat

Yashaswini Raj

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I am using this opportunity to express my gratitude to everyone who supported me
throughout the course of this Artificial Intelligence project. I am thankful for their aspiring
guidance, invaluably constructive criticism and friendly advice during the project work. I am
sincerely grateful to them for sharing their truthful and illuminating views on a number of
issues related to the project.

I express my warm thanks to our Artificial Intelligence faculty Mr. Prabin Rout for their
constant support and encouragement. I would also like to extend my wishes to our Course-
Coordinator Ms. Sulagna Saha for providing us with the golden opportunity to work with this
project. I would also take this opportunity to show my gratitude to all my faculties, friends and
my parents who have guided me throughout this journey.

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 INTRODUCTION
Automatic Number Plate Recognition
Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) is a technology that uses optical character
recognition on images to read vehicle registration plates to create vehicle location data. It can
use existing closed-circuit television, road-rule enforcement cameras, or cameras specifically
designed for the task. ANPR is used by police forces around the world for law enforcement
purposes, including checking if a vehicle is registered or licensed. It is also used for electronic
toll collection on pay-per-use roads and as a method of cataloguing the movements of traffic,
for example by highways agencies.
Automatic number plate recognition can be used to store the images captured by the
cameras as well as the text from the license plate, with some configurable to store a
photograph of the driver. Systems commonly use infrared lighting to allow the camera to take
the picture at any time of day or night. ANPR technology must take into account plate
variations from place to place.

Concerns about these systems have centered on privacy fears of government tracking
citizens' movements, misidentification, high error rates, and increased government spending.
Critics have described it as a form of mass surveillance.
In simple terms ANPR cameras 'photograph' the number plates of the vehicles that pass
them. This 'photograph' is then fed in a computer system to find out details about the driver
and owner of the vehicle and details about the vehicle itself. ANPR consists of cameras linked to
a computer. As a vehicle passes, ANPR 'reads' Vehicle Registration Marks - more commonly
known as number plates - from digital images, captured through cameras located either in a
mobile unit, in-built in traffic vehicles or via Closed Circuit Television (CCTV). The digital image is

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converted into data, which is processed through the ANPR system. Generally, the ANPR
technology can be bought in two modalities:
 The ANPR engine
 The ANPR equipment (Hardware + recognition engine)

The ANPR engine can recognize the number plate directly from the images stored in a hard disk.
Software of this type allows for taking efficient use of images that have been received from
other systems like CCTV or cameras. The ANPR equipment incorporates all the hardware
necessary to capture the images of the vehicles and to recognize the number plate. Moreover,
it incorporates the ANPR engine. The ANPR equipments are designed to offer the maximum
reliability.

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 WORKING
The ANPR process is divided into three steps. The detection of the vehicle, the capture of the
images and the process of recognition. Next, we will detail step by step how it works and
depending on each case what the advantages and disadvantages are:

 Detection of the vehicle: The first step is to take an image of the vehicle at the right time.
Thus, the number plate of the vehicle will be visible in the image. Nowadays, three kind of
trigger control exist.

1. Hardware trigger: The ANPR equipment controls physically a sensor directly installed in the
lane. Whenever a vehicle has been detected by the sensor, the ANPR equipment will know its
presence, and then the process of the capture begins.

2. Software trigger: The ANPR equipment communicates with the client application, which
physically controls a sensor directly installed in the lane. Whenever a vehicle has been detected
by the sensor, the client application knows the presence of the vehicle and communicates it to
the ANPR equipment. At this moment the process of the capture begins.

3. Free flow: The ANPR equipment does not need to receive signal from any external sensor.
The ANPR equipment takes images continuously and it is able to detect the vehicles
automatically.

4. Capture of the images: Once the vehicle is detected, the image of the vehicle is captured
along with all the details.

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The work is divided into several parts:

A. Input car image

B. Gray scale conversion
C. Reduce noise using mid-filtering method
D. License Plate Detection
E. Character segmentation
F. Character Recognition.

A. Input raw image: The image of the car number plate is taken.

B. Gray Scale Conversion: From the input RGB image it has to be converted to gray scale and
the 8-bit grey value calculated.

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C. Noise Reduction: Generally, median filtering technique is use to reduce the paper and salt
noise. Also, 3x 3 masks are used to get eight neighbors of a pixel and their corresponding gray
value.

D. License Plate Recognition: The basic step in recognition of vehicle number plate is to detect
the plate size. In general number plates are rectangular in shape. Hence we have to detect the
edges of the rectangular plate. Mathematical morphology will be used to detect that region.
Using Sobel edge detector we used to high light regions with a high edge magnitude and high
edge variance are identified.

E. Segmentation of characters: The next step is segmentation of the license plate area into
smaller parts which represent each character of the license plate. This is done using the vertical
projection.

F. Recognition: The process of character recognition is repeated for each character image
obtained in the last step. This process could be carried out in several steps. The output of this
process should be a recognized character. The set of possible outputs are characters that
appear on license plates, which are letters of the alphabet, numbers from 0 to 9 and special
characters like a dash.

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 Algorithms
There are seven primary algorithms that the software requires for identifying a license plate:

1. Plate localization – responsible for finding and isolating the plate on the picture.
2. Plate orientation and sizing – compensates for the skew of the plate and adjusts the
dimensions to the required size.
3. Normalization – adjusts the brightness and contrast of the image.
4. Character segmentation – finds the individual characters on the plates.
5. Optical character recognition.
6. Syntactical/Geometrical analysis – check characters and positions against country-
specific rules.
7. The averaging of the recognized value over multiple fields/images to produce a more
reliable or confident result. Especially since any single image may contain a reflected
light flare, be partially obscured or other temporary effect.

Steps 2, 3 and 4: The license plate is

normalized for brightness and contrast,
and then the characters are segmented to
be ready for OCR.

The complexity of each of these subsections of the program determines the accuracy of the
system. During the third phase (normalization), some systems use edge detection techniques to
increase the picture difference between the letters and the plate backing. A median filter may
also be used to reduce the visual noise on the image.

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 Applications areas of Automatic Number Plate Recognition
Automatic Number Plate Recognition has a wide range of applications since the license number
is the primary, most widely accepted, human readable, mandatory identifier of motor vehicles.
ANPR provides automated access of the content of the number plate for computer systems
managing databases and processing information of vehicle movements.

1. Parking: One of the main applications of ANPR is parking automation and parking
security: ticketless parking fee management, parking access automation, vehicle
location guidance, car theft prevention, "lost ticket" fraud, fraud by changing tickets,
simplified, partially or fully automated payment process, amongst many others.

2. Access Control: Access control in general is a mechanism for limiting access to areas and
resources based on users' identities and their membership in various predefined groups.
Access to limited zones, however, may also be managed based on the accessing vehicles
alone or together with personal identity. License plate recognition brings automation of
vehicle access control management, providing increased security, car pool management
for logistics, security guide assistance, event logging, event management, keeping access
diary, possibilities for analysis and data mining.

3. Motorway Road Tolling: Road Tolling means, that motorists pay directly for the usage
of particular segment of road infrastructures. Tolls are a common way of funding the
improvements of highways, motorways, roads and bridges: tolls are fees for services.
Efficient road tolling increases the level of related road services by reducing travel time
overhead, congestion and improve roadways quality. Also, efficient road tolling reduces
fraud related to non-payment, makes charging effective, reduces required manpower to
process events of exceptions. License plate recognition is mostly used as a very efficient
enforcement tool, while there are road tolling systems based solely on license plate
recognition too.

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4. Border Control: Border Control is an established state-coordinated effort to achieve
operational control of the country's state border with the priority mission of supporting
the homeland's security against terrorism, illegal cross border traffic, smuggling and
criminal activities. Efficient border control significantly decreases the rate of violent
crime and increases the society's security. Automatic number plate recognition adds
significant value by event logging, establishing investigate-able databases of border
crossings, alarming on suspicious passing’s, at many more.

5. Journey-Time Measurement: Journey Time Measurement is a very efficient and widely

usable method of understanding traffic, detecting conspicuous situations and events,
etc. A computer vision based system has its well known downfalls in Journey Time
Measurement, while Automatic Number Plate Recognition has provided its viability:
vehicle journey times can be measured reliably by automatic number plate recognition-
based systems. Data collected by license plate recognition systems can be used in many
ways after processing: feeding back information to road users to increase traffic
security, helping efficient law enforcement, optimizing traffic routes, reducing costs and
time, etc.

6. Law-Enforcement: Automatic number plate recognition is an ideal technology to be

used for law enforcement purposes. It is able to automatically identify stolen cars based
on the up-to date blacklist. Other very common law enforcement applications are red-
light enforcement and over speed charging and bus lane control.

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 PROBLEMS IN AUTOMATIC NUMBER PLATE RECOGNITION (ANPR)
There are a number of possible difficulties that the software must be able to cope with. These
include:

 Poor file resolution, usually because the plate is too far away. Sometimes, it’s the fault
of camera (rarely).
 Blurry images, particularly motion blur.
 Poor lighting and low contrast due to overexposure, reflection or shadows.
 An object obscuring (part of) the plate, quite often a tow bar, or dirt on the plate.
 Read license plates that are different at the front and the back because of towed
trailers, campers, etc.
 Vehicle lane change in the camera's angle of view during license plate reading.
 A different font, popular for vanity plates (some countries do not allow such plates,
eliminating the problem).
 Circumvention techniques.
 Lack of coordination between countries or states. Two cars from different countries or
states can have the same number but different design of the plate.
 While some of these problems can be corrected within the software, it is primarily left
to the software side of the system to work out solutions to these difficulties.
 On some cars, tow bars may obscure one or two characters of the license plate. Bikes on
bike racks can also obscure the number plate, though in some countries and
jurisdictions, such as Victoria, Australia, "bike plates" are supposed to be fitted. Some
small-scale systems allow for some errors in the license plate. When used for giving
specific vehicles access to a barricaded area, the decision may be made to have an
acceptable error rate of one character. This is because the likelihood of an unauthorized
car having such a similar license plate is seen as quite small. However, this level of
inaccuracy would not be acceptable in most applications of an ANPR system.
 System does not work at night.
 ANPR does not work if vehicles are travelling over 30mph.
 Plates not big enough to be read.
 Poor on-site Traffic Management resulting in missed plates / vehicles.
 Excessive skew angles causing recognition issues.

Presence of Unusual Characters in the License Plate may be misclassified as:

 Non Uniformity in License Plates depends on the Class of vehicles.
 Single / Multi Line Characters in the License Plate.
 Dust / Unwanted Materials in the License Plate.
 Non Uniformity in the Font Styles, Font Size and Color.

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 Problems in ANPR (Indian System)

The License plate structure is not uniform as stipulated by the laws of Indian Government.
Further, some additional guidelines stipulated by the state authorities differ across them:

 Majority vehicle owners do not comply with the norms foresaid for the Size and color of
the license plate.
 License plate images often possess external noises which will have adverse impact in
the extraction of the license plate image.
 The license plate image may be skewed and sheared at different angles based on the
motion of the vehicle which needs to be tilt corrected.
 There will be blurring in the license plate image due to the high speed motion of the
vehicle which needs to be resolved by calculating the motion blur parameters.
 Different classes of vehicles have their License plates at different positions and possess
different structure.
 In India, vehicles are foreseen with plate like structure in other parts of the vehicle body,
these plate like structures may be misclassified as vehicle’ License plate.
 It becomes a part of tradition to hang over conventional objects near the plate position,
which degrades the time and accuracy of the License plate extraction system.
 In India, in spite of the fact and law to keep the license plate clean and tidy, this has not
been effect in practice. This will lead to degrade the behavior of the system.

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Differences in style, size, orientation and color of the license plate characters will drastically
affect the quality of the license plate character segmentation and recognition. Expect the size of
the characters and numerals fixed in the license plate for image segmentation and recognition.
Different fonts and formats make image segmentation difficult. Varying lighting, camera
distance angle, and format of the image poses problems for segmentation and recognition;
which affects the overall efficiency and productivity of the ANPR systems. Hence, because of so
many problems in the current system we thereby gave some solutions which can be
implemented through AI, which would help in the better development of this system.


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 Conclusion and Future Scope
This document is the brief study of algorithms used for ANR (Automatic Number Plate
Recognition) and observed the performance of some algorithms. But all this algorithms are
image dependent. As image changes, the algorithm changes because one’s algorithm is efficient
for his input image, but inefficient for others input image. So there may be the future work on
the algorithm that will be image independent making the algorithms dynamic. During the study
it is observed that Preprocessing plays the major role and extracting the ROI from the
image is the difficult and tricky task because the position of the number plate in the
image is not fixed for every vehicle image. Hence, we have given some problems of this
system and how can they be solved by giving some inputs and suggesting their generalized
outputs. All the outputs are suggestive in nature and have been given after considering the
constraints.

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