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Automatic License Plate Recognition for Indian Roads Using Faster-RCNN

Conference Paper · December 2019

DOI: 10.1109/ICoAC48765.2019.246853

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 Automatic License Plate Recognition for Indian
Roads Using Faster-RCNN
Praveen Ravirathinam
Department of Computer Science and Information Systems
BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Pilani, India
praveen.ravirathinam@gmail.com
Abstract—Use of deep learning in Automatic License Plate
Recognition has been a topic of common research, in the past
few years. Recognition of Indian plates have always been a
challenge due to their aberrant nature with different fonts, size
of letters, padding and number of lines. In our work, we propose
a fully functional, end to end solution for license plate
recognition in India, considering all irregularities. Our system
uses a series of the state-of-the-art Faster Regional
Convolutional Neural Network to create a pipeline that gives an
efficient solution to the Indian situation under various
scenarios. Since there is no publicly available dataset for Indian
License plates, we made a balanced dataset using frames from
videos and photos from handheld devices, taking into
consideration all the irregularities. Our pipeline produced an
overall 88.5% total correctness and 10% partial correctness
(greater than 5 characters correct) for Indian plates. Inclusion
of a novel heuristics system increased total correctness to 91%.
License plate detection had a precision of 94.98% for all types
of vehicles. Our pipeline successfully segments over 99% of
characters from license plates with a mean average precision of
99.55% and was able to correctly recognise 98.6% of the
segmented characters.
Keywords—Automatic License Plate Recognition, Faster-
RCNN, Deep Learning, ResNet, VGG, Computer Vision,
Character Segmentation, Character Recognition
I. INTRODUCTION
Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) is an
important component of any smart city initiative or
intelligent transport system. ALPR has many practical
applications including smart parking lot, toll systems, police
chases, traffic signal violation detection, identification of
stolen/unregistered vehicles and border control. ALPR in
India has always been a challenge due to the many intricacies
present in Indian plates and diversity of vehicles and their
types.
Most ALPR systems consist of three main tasks, namely
License Plate Detection (LPD), Character Segmentation
(CS) and Character Recognition (CR) [1]. The system we
propose also has these three stages along with a heuristics
logic filter at the end. Each stage has been trained with
respect to the Indian situation, taking multiple challenging
cases for training from each category of problems. The
problems with ALPR in India are vast, most of which, with
the rise of Deep Learning (DL) techniques and proper
training can be addressed. However, one major factor in any
DL process is the availability of a proper dataset. This is a
major problem with ALPR in general, and India in particular,
because there is no public dataset available in India, which
covers all the problems. So, we had to resort to creating our
Arihant Patawari
Centre of Excellence
Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA)
Chennai, India
apatawari.tnega@tn.gov.in
own dataset, that is aligned towards the Indian scenario,
which is explained in detail, in a future section.
One of the main contributions of this paper is the
introduction of a full, end-to-end pipeline for ALPR in India,
using the state-of-the-art Faster Regional Convolutional
Neural Network (Faster-RCNN) [2] and Convolutional
Neural Network (CNN) in a cascaded manner. We used
Faster-RCNN for LPD and CS and we used CNN for CR,
each with its own specifically trained weights.
Another important contribution is the introduction of a
technique for creating a character recognition network for
India, using data created from CS network to enhance the
training further. One more contribution is the introduction of
a technique for accurate CS in Indian Plates. We also
introduce a dataset for Indian Plates.
The paper is organised as follows. We touch work related
to ALPR in Section II. Section III contains the proposed
system which discusses in detail, our dataset and the ideology
behind it, training procedures, frameworks of all the three
networks present in pipeline, along with the heuristic ideas
that have been applied. The details of testing process and the
results obtained are presented in Section IV. Conclusion and
future plans are reviewed in Section V.
II. RELATED WORK
In this section, we shall examine some common features
present in ALPR as well as problems in India and how to
approach them. This section will also show why image
processing techniques, like the ones used in Bangladesh [3]
will not work in the Indian scenario.
A. Challenges in India
There are many problems that could arise in Indian plate
detection. The first problem is with the vast variety of
vehicles present on a typical Indian road. The vehicle types
include cars, motorcycles, scooters, lorries, buses, auto
rickshaws, SUVs, mini trucks, vans, tractors etc. Each of
these types have a different format and style of plate. Plates
also have different number of lines among different types and
sometimes even within the same type. For example, 95% of
two wheelers and auto rickshaw vehicles have two
lines(multiline), whereas 90% of the cars have single line
plates. Another problem is the layout of the plates even with
the same number of lines. For example, the layout of plates
in buses and motorcycles are different, even though both are
multiline. To add to the problems, there is the usage of
several types of fonts and custom designed plates. The plates
are also of different shapes and sizes i.e. all plates are not
rectangular, some are trapezoid and other irregular shapes.
B. Deep learning
As mentioned before, though there are various challenges
present in India, usage of deep learning techniques can
address most of these issues with a high level of accuracy.
Over the past few years, Convolutional Neural Networks
have been used in various computer vision tasks. Many
frameworks of CNNs have also arisen and for each task, a
particular framework can be chosen to produce best results.
We chose the Faster-RCNN approach due to ease of training
and ability of identifying small objects at a high speed. Some
plates in buses and autos are very small and require a lot of
training to locate those plates. Use of deep learning
techniques to solve the ALPR problem has shown to work in
Brazil [4] and in other countries [1],[5]-[6].
C. OCR
Many ALPR pipelines employ OCR techniques for
Character recognition. Unfortunately, OCR methods did not
work in our testing dataset. This can be attributed to the fact
that letters on Indian plates are not of standard size and shape.
Another major problem in the Indian context is that the
characters on the plate are not limited to the traditional
alphanumeric dataset, but also native and indigenous letters.
This is because there is a lack of standardization of plates in
India. This creates a huge challenge, as there is no proper
dataset for these characters. We have chosen not to include
such plates in our study. Owing to these factors, we chose to
incorporate a CNN for CR rather than using OCR.
D. OpenALPR
One of the most famous open-source ALPR software is
OpenALPR [7]. It works on the principle of detection
followed by segmentation and then OCR processing. The
detector and segmenter can be trained, using your own data
which was tried using our custom dataset. Corresponding
files were created and tested using a validation dataset of 200
images. The resulting model was about 96% accurate in
detecting region of plate, only failing in cases where the plate
is very small or multiple license plate-like objects were
present in the images. However, correct segmentation
occurred in less than 30% cases. Since OpenALPR operates
on a binary image, many times, a nail was considered a letter
and classified as ‘O’. Moreover, the OCR could not classify
many characters. We had to incorporate the European OCR
to get some results. Due to the random features in letters and
because of the fact that India does not follow a consistent font
usage for all plates, OCR failed to give good results.
All these results further encouraged us to use deep
learning approach for ALPR
III. PROPOSED SYSTEM
This section describes in detail, the proposed approach of
ALPR in India and is divided into five subsections, one for
discussing our dataset and ideology, one for each stage of
ALPR in our pipeline (LPD, CS and CR) and finally one
regarding heuristic ideas applied. We are covering each stage
in detail because each stage uses a different model and
sometimes even the CNN used is not the same. Each stage
has its parameters fine-tuned particularly for the task it is
supposed to do. Faster RCNN model was used for LPD and
CS whereas CNN was used for CR. Heuristics were applied
through simple logic statements. Faster-RCNN has a base
CNN on which regional proposal and classification occur.
This base CNN can be VGG, ResNet [8], Inception etc. We
chose to do a comparison between VGG16 and ResNet-50 as
base CNNs. We trained models using both bases individually
and chose the better one among the models at the end.
Some ALPR pipelines incorporate the use of vehicle
identification before locating license plate however we chose
not to include this due to the sheer number of vehicle types
on a typical Indian road. A summary of our pipeline is given
in Fig. 1.
A. Dataset
The most important factor in any deep learning problem
is a good dataset. A biased or unbalanced dataset can lead to
wrong or biased results. It must be made sure that there is no
common feature among the items in the dataset apart from
the features of interest.
There are many factors to take into account, while
considering India. We had to make sure that the dataset
created was balanced in terms of types of vehicles as well as
layouts of plates. First, we found that the types of vehicles
present in a typical Indian city road consist of cars
(hatchbacks, sedans and SUVs), two wheelers (motorcycles
and scooters), buses (government and private), lorries, mini
trucks and auto rickshaws. We also found that within a
particular type itself, there are many layouts of plates
possible. For example, majority of cars have single line
plates, but some cars have two-line plates. This brings the
next consideration of a balanced number of plates with
respect to the number of lines. Indian plates can be of a single
line or two lines. We also found that, within vehicle types,
same number of lines does not mean same layout. For
example, majority of auto rickshaw and motorcycle plates
are two lined, but their layouts are different. The fonts used
in both are also different, with some plates in auto rickshaws
having letters painted instead of printed.
Due to all these factors, no standard data set can be used
for training models to be used in the Indian context. Training
models, taking these factors into account will cover the
standard cases, since standard cases have less variance when
compared to the cases we are dealing with. Therefore,
keeping all the factors in consideration, we began collecting
data. We first tried to extract frames from the traffic camera
feed, but the frames extracted were not of great clarity. The
plates were also not visible and were too far. So, we figured
that the best way is to collect the images ourselves. We used
handheld devices and video cameras to capture images and
Fig 1. Summary of pipeline showing all 3 networks present giving a
result with confidence of 93.99%.
videos directly from the road, after taking the consent of
vehicle owners. We also downloaded good quality images
from websites trading in second-hand vehicles.
Finally, we got a balanced dataset of 2806 images, shown
in Fig. 2, consisting of all vehicle types, license plate shapes,
license plate layout and fonts of which 2209 images were
used for training and 597 were used for testing the LPD
network. We also got 824 plates for CS network of which
711 were used for training and 113 were used for testing.
Many people did not want to make the images of their
vehicles with plate details publicly available, which is why
the images are small and is just meant to get an idea on the
type of images we used in training. For afore stated reasons,
we are not releasing our dataset publicly.
Another point to note is that in India the letters on the
plates are not printed in all cases. For example, in autos most
of the time the letters are painted i.e. handwritten. So, while
collecting data we made sure that we took this factor into
account. As a result, in many cases, our final pipeline was
able to give correct answers for such painted handwritten
plates. However, our dataset does not include non-
alphanumeric characters. This includes characters from
native languages such as Hindi, Tamil and Sanskrit.
Normally found in rural areas, we were not able to obtain
many of such plates. Our model does not work for cursive
letters as well. However, plates with cursive letters are very
rare. If a dataset of these plates is obtained the method of
training we are using will work. As a result, our model cannot
account for these cases and is thus a limitation to our system.
B. License Plate Detection
Most countries have their plates to be rectangular.
However, in India, as mentioned before, plates come in all
shapes and sizes. For the most part plates, are rectangular in
shape but two-wheeler vehicles also have a trapezoid shape
plate in some cases. As for sizes, the mean size of plates
within different vehicles varies with cars having a mean size
of 500 mm x 120 mm and two wheelers having 200 mm x
100 mm. Auto Rickshaws also have very small plates and are
fixed in random of the vehicle. And in most cases, the license
number is engraved or painted on the vehicle instead of
having a plate. Taking all these factors into consideration, we
decided that the best way to go about this was to label
rectangular bounding boxes for all plates, even the oddly
shaped ones as shown in Fig. 3. We used Faster-RCNN using
both VGG16 and ResNet-50 model separately to train this
network.
Over multiple training examples, this method of labelling
and training worked, and the system was able to identify the
plates. We also found the optimal number of epochs for
training to be 100 using mAP as a measurement of error. The
relationship between epochs and mAP with testing images
can be found in Table I.
C. Character Segmentation
This part was very challenging, because this is the stage
where the most randomness is present in the whole pipeline.
Standard methods for character segmentation like the
OpenALPR [7] will not work here because the characters in
Indian plates are not of uniform shape, size, font and even
padding. Unlike most countries, the number of characters per
plate in India is also different as well as the number of lines.
Even within the lines, the number of characters per line
varies. For the most part, four wheeled vehicles have single
line plates with characters, whereas two wheelers in majority
have multiline plates.
Number of characters per plate varies from 7 to 10 with
varying number of letters and numbers. So, we cannot apply
a pattern recognition model at this stage. The padding also
varies and ranges from 1 cm to 0.5 cm between letters.
Another feature is that the letters occur in blocks i.e. letters
are clustered together. As observed, plates do not follow a
particular pattern unlike other countries like Brazil [8], so we
labelled our plates in a way to train the network to identify
character locations, irrespective of where they are in the
plate.
For this, we took 711 plates consisting of balanced
number of multiline and single line plates with all the

Fig 3. Few labelled sample images used for training the LPD network.

TABLE I
OPTIMAL EPOCH NUMBER FOR LPD NETWORK

Number of
Number Overall
Network Base CNN Training
of Epochs mAP
Samples
15 88.4%
30 91.7%
License Plate
50 92.5%
Detection ResNet-50 2209
80 93.8%
(LPD)
Fig 2. A few images from the custom dataset created. It contains a mix 100 94.98%
of all factors including multiline, buses, autos, multi-spacing and even 120 94.81%
trapezoid shaped plates.
different fonts. Labelling was done by rectangular bounding
box around each character in the plate as shown in Fig. 4. We
tried another method where we label parts on plate that could
be mistaken as a character using ‘NotChar’ label. However,
inclusion of this label class led to confusion, so we chose not
to include it in the final model.
Once again, we measured mAP of testing plates to find
out optimal number of epochs and found it to be around 20.
The relationship can be found in Table II.
D. Character Recognition
The major problem in character recognition is the vast
number of fonts used in plates. We figured the best way to
address this is to train a network to identify the letter/number
from a cropped image of the particular character. This way,
the network can learn features associated with each
letter/number, and can thus be used for covering various
fonts, including those used in the painted plates.
For this, we employed a standard CNN for classification
and used cropped letters from plates as training data.
Initially, we manually labelled 1000 characters for extraction
from plates and used these characters for training the model.
We then used this model to extract more characters from 100
more plates and then trained again. We did this recursively
for all the 900 plates we had. At the end, we had around 8000
characters for training with around 200-300 characters per
class.
This method of recursive training worked very well and
gave good results. However, confusion did occur between
characters with similar features such as O and Q, I and 1, O
and 0, S and 5 and even A and 4 in some cases. However,
most of these issues were solved using heuristic rules.
E. Heuristics
The idea of a heuristic comes into play when we know of
a certain pattern about the sequence of characters in plates.
This method proved to be successful in research done in
Brazil [4]. The basic idea is that we can apply some logic
rules to make sure a particular place in a sequence holds a
particular type of character, i.e. either a number or a letter.
An example of this can be seen in plates with 10 characters.
If the sequence is detected to be 10 characters, we can say
that the plate must be of the form @@##@@#### where #
Fig 4. Few labelled sample images used for training the CS network.
TABLE II
OPTIMAL EPOCH NUMBER FOR CS NETWORK
Number of
Number Overall
Network Base CNN Training
of Epochs mAP
Samples
5 93.8%
Character 10 97.8%
Segmentation ResNet-50 711 15 98.92%
(CS) 20 99.55%
25 99.32%
represents a number and @ represents a letter. Like this,
multiple situations were mapped, and this led to an increase
in accuracy of pipeline. An example of this is if the plate was
identified as ‘DL1SED6345’ the heuristics will correct it to
‘DL15ED6345’ replacing the ‘S’ with ‘5’ as the rules state
that a number must occur in 4th position of a plate with 10
characters. Replacement only occurs with similar feature
characters such as ‘1’ and ‘I’, ‘0’ and ‘O’, ‘A’ and ‘4’, etc.
The vice versa case of a number being replaced with a letter
has also been mapped. However, all scenarios cannot be
mapped and there are constraints to this system i.e. not all
situations can be rectified.
One has to note that these heuristics are specific to India
and must be customized according to the country of interest.
IV. RESULTS
In this section, we will discuss about the results obtained
for each task and also about the overall accuracy of the
pipeline.
The measurement of error we used to evaluate our models
is the concept of Mean Average Precision(mAP). mAP as a
measurement of precision is commonly used in object
detection models and measures the intersection of predicted
bounding box with the actual bounding box. We kept the
threshold of intersection, also known as Intersection over
Union (IoU), as 0.5 for all cases.
The first thing we were able to conclude is that ResNet-
50 as a base CNN for Faster-RCNN worked better than
VGG16. Experimental results at optimal epoch for each base
with mAP is given in Table III. We can attribute this to the
residual property of ResNet as well as a smaller number of
trainable parameters.
LPD was tested using 597 images, with breakdown and
results given in Table IV. Overall mAP came to 0.9498 or
94.98% which included all types of vehicles. As seen in
Table IV, the mAP of other vehicles is quite low due to the
fact that, in these vehicles, the plates are very small and
sometimes there are no plates at all. Instead, the characters
are painted on the surface of the vehicles. This commonly
occurs in auto rickshaws and buses. However, cars and two
wheelers produced high mAPs, failing in only very few
cases. Our model was also able to detect tilted plates and non-
rectangular plates as well. The results and predictions can be
seen in Fig. 5.
CS was tested with 113 plates with results given in Table
V. Unlike LPD testing, here we had to include a confidence
check before including a prediction in the mean. This is
because, since there are many character-like objects in a
plate, our model predicted some parts of the plates to be
characters but with low confidence. We tried resolving this
using more training, but it led to overfitting. We observed
that in 99.1% of cases, actual characters were predicted with
confidence of greater than 0.9. So, we kept 0.9 as confidence
threshold to be included in the mean average precision and
TABLE III
BASE CNN COMPARISON AT OPITMAL EPOCH RESNET50 VS. VGG16
Network Base CNN mAP
ResNet-50 94.98%
License Plate Detection (LPD)
VGG16 91.43%
ResNet-50 99.55%
Character Segmentation (CS)
VGG16 95.63%
 TABLE IV testing cases can be seen in Fig. 7
LPD NETWORK RESULTS BY IMAGE TYPE
The inclusion of heuristics corrected 5 of the partially
Network Image Type Number of Images mAP correct cases to full correctness thus leading to an overall
Single line 221 98.01% accuracy of 91%. One example of such a case can be seen in
License Plate
Multiline 241 97.97% Fig. 7. However, we are choosing not to focus on heuristics
Detection
Other Vehicles 135 83.24% results and rather focus on results of each model at each stage
(LPD)
Overall 597 94.98%
because, if these models are good, heuristics are not even
TABLE V needed. While comparing with other software, we chose not
CS NETWORK RESULTS BY PLATE TYPE to include heuristics in the pipeline.
Though each stage in the model has a precision of around
Network Image Type Number of Plates mAP
Single line 47 99.42%
95%, the overall results have a lower accuracy. This can be
Character
Segmentation Multiline 66 99.67% attributed to the Intersection over Union (IoU) factor. We set
(CS) Overall 113 99.55% the bar for IoU as 0.5 for all cases. However, in some cases
even if IoU is 0.6, the CR network is not able to recognise
obtained the overall precision to be 99.55%, with IoU as 0.5, the character, because the character is only partially
as shown in Table V and prediction in Fig. 6. As can be segmented out - that is, only part of the character appears and
observed, the model is able to segment multiple cases not the whole letter. This can even lead to confusion between
including different size of letters within plate, different letters such as ‘I’ and ‘T’. We found that, if IoU of the
padding within plate, painted plates, multiline and single line segmented character is above 0.9, the CR network produces
and even tilted multiline plates. a good result. Since a plate generally has over 9 characters,
The CNN used for CR network achieved an accuracy of the probability that one character segmenting out with an IoU
98.6% in identifying a character, only failing in similar of less than 0.9 is very high and this can lead to either missing
feature characters such as ‘1’ and ‘I’. The CR network was or wrong classification of this character leading to error.
also able to identify handwritten/painted characters as well Another potential error occurs in the LPD network where
because of the feature learning technique. This accuracy of the license plate region is wrongly detected. Sometimes in
98.6% is quite high compared to other models and OCR the back of some vehicles there are many plates like banners
techniques used for ALPR in India. Most of the mismatches or posters present. This is common in buses where the back
however were resolved using the heuristic rules. of the vehicle can be scattered with advertisements.
. In the end, we were left with only 200 images for pipeline Sometimes our LPD network identifies these regions as
testing. This testing set was balanced with respect to plates but with low confidence. In very rare cases this was
frequency at which such vehicles occur on the road. Our identified as the only plate region and thus led to wrong
pipeline gave a completely correct answer in 177 cases and results. Another important factor to consider is that, since we
gave a partially correct answer in 20 cases, failing only in 3 are cascading models, a little bit of error is added up at each
cases. A case was considered to be partially correct if five or stage and models, a little bit of error is added up at each stage
more characters were identified correctly. Some of the and in some cases can completely offset the end results
We also tried the pipeline on some Western country
plates to check whether the software works in standard
scenarios. As expected, the pipeline was able to identify
almost all the plates in the standard scenario as well. This can
be attributed to the fact that foreign plates in general have a
standard format and are less aberrant than the ones in India.
Also, there are not many vehicles types in foreign countries.

Fig 6. Some predictions done by CS network. As seen predictions are

working for tilted plates, uneven font sizes and uneven padding

Fig 5. Some predictions done by LPD network with confidence level of Fig 7. Some results of pipeline without incorporation of heuristics
each prediction. As seen majority of predictions have confidence greater because inclusion cannot give a real feel of the accuracy. As seen ‘0’ is
than 95%. confused for ‘O’. This was solved using heuristics.
This led to detection with high confidence in almost every
case. Wherever problems occurred, it was mostly because of
the CR network. Since some characters vary in shape, there
was some confusion. Also, the heuristic rules cannot be
applied here, as the sequence of characters in foreign plates
are different from that in India. Extensive study was not done
on this front, because the focus was on the Indian scenario.
Overall, the pipeline has a better accuracy in India when
compared to any open source software and can be used in
traffic cameras and parking systems throughout India. One
goal of this can be to one day incorporate this is in mobile
devices as suggested in [9]. This way, traffic police can use
their mobile devices to scan and the results can be directly
sent to a government database. We can go further to add
automatic billing for road rules violations to facilitate the
process and streamline the roads for a safer experience.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have shown how the use of deep learning
techniques can greatly simplify the process of ALPR in India.
Use of deep learning also allows the inclusion of all the
aberrant features present in plates in India. In this paper, we
have presented a full end-to-end pipeline for ALPR in India,
which can tackle a lot of intricacies present in plates,
including multiple lines, irregular padding, different plate
shapes, different fonts and non-uniform font size. For LPD
and CS, we have proposed a method that works well for India
and also introduced a recursive training technique for the CR
network, which caters to the Indian situation.
Our LPD network achieved a 94.98% precision with IoU
threshold as 0.5, only being brought down from 98% due to
widespread prevalence of small plates in autos and buses.
Our CS network had a high mean average precision of
99.55%, with IoU as 0.5, including multiline plates and
predicted 99.1% of characters with a confidence higher than
90%. Our CR network achieved a 98.6% accuracy using the
recursive technique, with misclassification being present
only in cases of characters with similar features. Overall the
pipeline without inclusion of heuristics had an accuracy of
88.5% full correctness and 10% partial correctness in the
remainder of total cases. Inclusion of heuristics led to an
increase in overall accuracy to 91%. The overall decrease in
accuracy when compared to individual stages can be
attributed to the cascading effect as well as the low IoU of
some segmented-out characters in character segmentation.
For further work we want to use the same data to train the
YOLO framework [10], another network for object detection
which has proved very fast for real time object detection and
has also been used in other countries for ALPR pipelines. We
also want to increase our accuracy for LPD network
especially for autos and buses. To do this, more data is
required, which we are currently working on. We also feel,
another reason for lower accuracy is the irregular size and
quality of images. Resizing affects the low-quality images,
due to which they do not even clear the CS network properly.
The detection of plates in low light images can be improved
by more training. The CR network can be improved by
adding support for native languages. As mentioned before,
this is a limitation to our model and with a proper dataset
addition of this feature is possible. We wish to add multiple
languages such as Hindi, Tamil and Sanskrit in the future.
Another task that our model cannot do but can be
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incorporated is handwriting recognition. We feel that training
a proper dataset using the same method can incorporate this.
Finally, our model is trained with majority of images
being head-on. So, another improvement we can aim for is
training for angled plates. This can be helpful in reading a
plate from a traffic light and in other uses of ALPR in India.
Our proposed methodology for ALPR achieves promising
results for the Indian context. We believe the pipeline can be
incorporated ubiquitously as-is, especially in cities with high
degree of stochasticity, to improve road safety and overall
driving experience.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank TensorFlow for
providing a platform to train our models and Dataturks for
providing tools for labelling with ease.
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