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Campus Vehicle Monitoring Through Image Processing

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-13-5802-9_29

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Campus Vehicle Monitoring Through
Image Processing

G. Jagadamba, Shrinivasacharya Purohit and G. Chayashree

Abstract The usage of vehicles has been rapidly increasing and the entry of the
unauthorized vehicles in the campus has become a hectic problem. In this situation,
the detection of unauthorized vehicles plays an important role nowadays. In these
scenarios, the vehicle number plate recognition system has attracted many of the
researchers to work with the concept of image recognition and processing. Theft of
vehicles, breaking of traffic rules, entering into the restricted space, so on are increas-
ing day by day. Thus to break this act, vehicle license registration code recognition is
necessary. The recognition system can avoid the problem of vehicle theft, breaking of
traffic rules, restriction of unauthorized vehicles to the secured area, and so on. The
work focuses on recognizing the individual character within the registered license
plate and aims to achieve high accuracy by optimizing many parameters that have
higher recognition rate than the conventional techniques.

Keywords Detection · Traffic · Vehicle

1 Introduction

With the rapid increase in the number of vehicles, the vehicle recognition, tracking,
and management have become the major topic of study. The most interesting and
challenging part is the detection of Indian vehicles by their number plates. In early

G. Jagadamba (B) · S. Purohit

Department of Information Science and Engineering,
Siddaganga Institute of Technology, Tumakuru, India
e-mail: jagadambasu@gmail.com
S. Purohit
e-mail: purohitsn@gmail.com
G. Chayashree
Department of Information Science and Engineering,
GSSS Institute of Technology, Mysuru, India
e-mail: chayashreeg29@gmail.com

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 305

V. Sridhar et al. (eds.), Emerging Research in Electronics, Computer Science
and Technology, Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering 545,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-5802-9_29
306 G. Jagadamba et al.

days, the unauthorized vehicle detection is left to the human operators and was
found to be susceptible to more errors. Hence, from the past two decades, automatic
vehicle detection systems have been raised. However, the job of vehicle detection was
processed through the vehicle number plate recognition. In India, the number plates
of vehicles are found to be in different shapes and size and also have the different
color. Soon after, the recognition tasks were doubled and the only one solution was
found to be through the image processing techniques [1].
The image processing techniques involves the process of the capturing the images
using some of the standard mathematical operations for which the input can be an
image, or a series of images, or a video, and can be a photograph or a video frame.
The output phase of the image processing may result in an image or an identification
of characteristics or parameters related to the image [2]. The image processing tech-
niques also treats the image as the two-dimensional signal where the third dimension
being the time or the z-axis and applies the standard signal processing techniques
[3]. However, the image processing includes some of the morphological changes
done on the image been captured. Morphological operations are first performed on
the captured images and are simplified to segment all the numbers and letters used in
the number plate by segmentation [3]. After segmentation of characters, the numbers
present on the license plate were identified, and the approach of template matching is
used. However, the important task was the identification of the accurate region of the
number plate, segmentation of the numbers and letters to identify them separately
[2, 3].
In the field of computer vision, object recognition technology is used for finding
and identifying the objects in the captured image or video sequence [4]. Despite the
fact that the image of the objects may vary in different sizes, scales, viewpoints, or
even when they are rotated or translated humans can recognize objects in images with
little effort. The task of recognizing the partially obstructed from its view is still a
challenge for computer vision systems. Among the different approaches raised over
multiple decades [5], “Automatic Number Plate Recognition” is one among them.
The automatic number plate recognition was invented by the Police Scientific Devel-
opment Branch in the UK in 1997 [6, 7]. However, much of the popularity was gained
during the last decade along with the improvements in the increase in the processing
speed and the digital camera. Automatic number plate recognition system helps in
extraction of the vehicle license plate number from digital images involves an image
processing technology [8]. It consists of a camera which has the capability to captur-
ing an image, finding the number plate location in the captured image, extraction of
characters, and translating to the required pixels into the alphanumerically readable
string or character became the major task [9].
To tackle the challenge of number plate location identification three methods are
identified [10]. The first phase includes the identification of number plate using the
binary image obtained by the gray level image. The gray level image necessitates
the good contrast and the uniform lighting across the plate, and the number plate to
be free from cracks and dirt. The second phase includes the vertical edge detection,
which necessitates to discovery of the appropriate threshold based on the different
conditions such as weather and illumination. The illumination and weather conditions
Campus Vehicle Monitoring Through Image Processing 307

in some of the practical situations make the edge detection technique to be tough job
while detecting the appropriate threshold. But, the alternate measure can be adopted
to overcome the toughness in the threshold detection. The third phase involves the
identification of the area presenting the maximum local contrast to locate the number
plate [9, 10]. However, apart from this, the number plates which include various
colors, characters, and the background are always a tedious job. In this work, we
assumed that the size of the number plate is known.
Massive integration of the information technologies into all the aspects of this
modern life has caused a high demand for processing vehicles as conceptual resources
in information systems. Since it has no sense for any of the standalone information
systems without any data, there was also a great need to transform information about
vehicles between the information systems and reality [11]. This can be achieved by
the special intelligent equipment or a human agent in the real environment and reflect
it as conceptual resources. Due to these advantages, various recognition techniques
have been developed, and number plate recognition systems are used in various
security applications, traffic access, and border control [12]. Hence, we propose
the automatic number plate recognition to lay down the standard procedures which
provide effective security at the campus. It also provides the security in the personal
property thefts, and also the items left unattended or in unsecured areas [13].

2 Literature Survey

The vehicle detection carried out by license plate recognition is attracting many of the
researchers to incorporate the system that has advanced to gain useful and interesting
results. The variety of platforms has been used and diversity in the plate formats,
relative motion between image, camera, and non-uniform illumination conditions
while carrying out the image acquisition is the challenge in the license plate recogni-
tion system. Also, the noisy patterns, edge detection, and their enhancement degrade
the whole performance of the system. Some of the works are either based on mov-
ing vehicle detection methods continued with the background subtraction methods.
Other than these methods, we find some more algorithms and methods for automatic
number plate recognition. Thus, many research concepts are to be known to improve
the existing technologies. In the following subsections, some of the methods are
investigated to twofold the knowledge about the ongoing works.
Sarfraz and Ahmed [14] proposed the license plate recognition methods using
the image acquisition using the digital camera, license plate extraction using vertical
edge detection by filtering by seed filling algorithm, vertical edge matching, and
Sobel algorithm, segmentation, character recognition using template matching using
Hamming distance approach and normalization. This work resulted in providing
overall system efficiency of about 95%. However, the system was able to detect
only for white, black, red, and green color plate or numbers [15]. The work done
by Sulehria and Zhang [16] achieved the efficiency about 95% for the real-time
environment through the image enhancement using histogram equalization method.
308 G. Jagadamba et al.

Morphological operations like dilation and erosion, Hat transformations for contrast,
enhancement setting, structuring elements by thickening, plate region confirmation,
and character segmentation and character recognition by Neuron implementation
model are used all the way. In [17] Ozbay and Ercelebi also worked with the same
algorithms and techniques. However, the work resulted in achieving the recognition
unit of 98.8%, Segmentation of the characters of 96%, Overall system performance
of 92.57% recognition rate, Extraction of plate region of 97.6%. It was found that
the system has the limitation in recognizing car license plate for the Turkish license
plates.
Based on the success rate, we found the work done by Chen and Liu [16] achieved
the identification of number plates with the efficiency of 95.7%. Combining this rate
with the location success (97.3%), the overall success rate of our LPR algorithm is
about 93.1%. The main limitations that are noticed here are that the system is only
intended for the recognition of Chinese license plates [16].
In [18], Suri and VermaEr, focused on edge detection technique and filtering of
noise is done by the Median Filter, Smoothing, Connector, Masking and then color
conversation. However, they can achieve good efficiently. Kumar and Kumar [19]
proposed the system to identify the Malaysian license plate to reach the efficiency
of about 98%. However, Dashtban et al., [20] achieved 91% accuracy by involving
plate localization Noise alleviation, changing color space, Edge detection, sepa-
rating objects from the background, intensity dynamic range modification, finding
connected component, candidate selection, for the recognition, artificial feed for-
ward neural network. However, this system detected English characteristics for the
Parisian number plate.
A concept of multiple layer backpropagation using neural networks by Asthana
et al. [21] was implemented. The approach converted the image into binary and
applied the neural network to detect individual symbol by matrix mapping. How-
ever, the system achieved 94% using the hidden layer approach and 96.53% average
recognition rate is achieved for using the double hidden layer. Sharma and Kaur [22],
Lekhana and Srikantaswamy [23], Zhou et al., [24], Lee et al., [25] used the concept
of pre-processing of image by histogram equalization, plate area detection by various
morphological operations and extraction of plate region by edge detection algorithm
using canny operator. The system [22] resulted in the overall accuracy of 89.74%, an
efficiency of 91.02%, segmentation efficiency of 88.46% and [23] resulted in 93.2%
“true” detection rate. For real-time data [25], detection accuracy was about 93% with
the limitation that very much damaged plate cannot be recognized. The systems were
sensitive to the angle of view with the physical appearance and environment condi-
tions. Lee et al. [26] proposed the real-time vehicle license plate recognition based on
2D Haar Discrete Wavelet Transform. The system includes the three processes that
are available by 2D Haar after the discrete wavelet transform technique. The system
resulted in the recognition rates in 93%, but the main advantage of this approach is
the usage of Haar Discrete Wavelet Transform where each time transform only needs
1/4 of the original image. Hence, this method can execute with the faster speed.
On the other hand, locating the license plate region, some researchers have pro-
posed the techniques for recognizing numbers based on wavelet analysis, shape, and
Campus Vehicle Monitoring Through Image Processing 309

gray-level where looked for the region whose features are similar to characters in
images [27]. Duan et al. [28] proposed a method which uses Hough transform and
contour to detect license plate on static pictures. In [28] the candidates are found by
the identification of contour in the edge space to apply the Hough transform to filter
the fake candidates in the image. It is also found the canter of the license plate in
the video using neural network wherein the input pattern position is random. The
canter position of the image is decided through many iterations of learning. Here,
the accuracy was good with the cost of time. Hsieh et al. [29], proposed a contour
tracking algorithm to detect the region of the license plate in the static picture, where
an enhanced design of neural network helped in recognizing the character. The algo-
rithm built was in a hidden layer between the input layer and output layer, in which
similarity was defined by the ratio of the stored pattern. Chang et al. employed the
HSI and color edge to find the license plate. They built Hue (H), Saturation (S),
Intensity (I) and Edge (E) maps and aggregated all of these by fuzzy operations.
In the similar approach [30], the license plate locating module is formulated by
using the fuzzy disciplines using the concept of computer vision. However, [31]
pointed toward the consideration of two objects. The work pointed toward the iden-
tification of pixels corresponding to the labeled region and is also used to analyze
the limits which were encountered due to separation of an object from other objects.
In machine learning, KNN has supervised learning models with associated learn-
ing algorithms that analyze data and recognize patterns used for classification and
regression analysis. It avoids some inherent shortcomings of neural networks which
have the ability of nonlinear system identification and generalization with small sam-
ples. In addition to performing the linear classification, it can efficiently perform a
nonlinear classification using kernel trick, implicitly mapping their inputs into high
dimensional feature spaces [32].

3 System Design

The proposed system “Campus Vehicle Monitoring through Image Processing,” con-
sists of various hardware and software units in order to achieve desired result. Figure 1
shows the architecture of vehicle detection and alarming system. The very first step is
to detect motion to check if any object is entering. The sensing unit in the architecture
does the task of motion sensing and PIR sensor is used for this purpose. Raspberry
Pi is used as hardware controller. If the motion is detected, then images of the object
are captured by image capturing unit using camera.
These images are further processed in processing unit using Microsoft APIs,
Kraken, and OCR. After processing, the number plate details are extracted from the
image. The next step is to check if that number plate detail is present in the stored
data which contains previously stored authorized number plate details. If any number
plate detail is not present in the database, then signal is sent to the alarming system
which uses buzzer for alerting purpose.
310 G. Jagadamba et al.

Fig. 1 Architecture of Sensing Subsystem Processing Subsystem Template

unauthorized vehicle Storage
detection system Hardware
PIR Sensor Controller

Image Capturing
Camera Module
Alarm
Image Processing Module

3.1 Detection of Motion Using PIR Sensor

The motion detection techniques always involve the process to sense the presence
of human or any heat emitting moving objects in a specific region. This technique
is widely used in the security systems to detect the intruder at the door, unautho-
rized vehicle detection, security in banks, shopping malls, during loads operations
in industries, and sensing the presence of human in the absence of real owner.
Motion detection can be categorized into two ways based on the way in which
the motion is detected. Considering an input given to a mobile is pressed, the letters
get displayed on the mobile screen by detecting the mechanical motion given as
the input. There are electronic methods by which the motion can be detected using
the infrared light and acoustic [32]. However, the device or sensors that detect the
movement of human beings or the heat emitting objects are termed as motion sensor
detector. The motion detectors fall into: Active Motion Sensors, and Passive Motion
Sensors. In our work, a pyroelectric passive motion sensor (PIR) is utilized. In order
to have a clear picture of image being captured and in avoidance of blurred image
that would have occurred on caption through pi camera, proposed system uses web
camera. Perhaps, time taken to capture images per second is also efficient than pi
camera.

3.2 Image Processing Methods

Figure 2 shows the flow of image processing method for vehicle plate recognition.
Optical character recognition (OCR) is a technic that involves operations such as
conversion of scanned images, encoding of the handwritten characters into machine-
encoded text, and recognition of printed characters. The technique involves the con-
version of image into the RGB format, then to grayscale and binary image. Soon after,
the character segmentation process segments the extracted region into the individual
characters. From the captured input image, the first phase includes the cropping of
the number plate characters from the starting to the ending point leaving all the extra
Campus Vehicle Monitoring Through Image Processing 311

Fig. 2 Workflow of license

plate recognition

wide spaces from top to below and from right to left as it is. From this process, the
characters will be seen to fit in the number plate region. The last phase includes the
template matching that affects the accuracy of automatic number plate recognition.
Thus these techniques are found to be more flexible and relatively straightforward
for the usage in the object localization technique. However, the computational power
and time may limit the applicability and identification of large and multifaceted
templates.

4 Results

According to the experimental analysis, evaluation is done based on efficiency in the

recognition of license plate. It is very much important to know the parameters which
help in knowing the evaluation of work. Various results are obtained on execution of
some sample of examples. For experimental analysis, four different forms of license
plates are considered. Horizontal orientation of license plate with 0° tilt with single
row, horizontal orientation of license plate with 0° tilt with two rows, horizontal
orientation of license plate with 0° tilt with two rows along country or any character
behind, and horizontal orientation of license plate with some angle tilt with single
row. The test case assumes those license plates are according to RTO norms and are
only for Indian license plate in some proximity limit. The last assumption was that
the license plates should not be tilted more than 45°.
Figures 3 and 4 show the test case for the authorized number plate which is
straight and in the two-row form. However, an experiment to identify the unauthorized
312 G. Jagadamba et al.

Fig. 3 Image of license plate with 0° orientation in two-row format

Fig. 4 Recognition for the two-row authorized license plate shown in Fig. 3

Fig. 5 Tilted license plate

number plate was also done and the result is shown in Figs. 5 and 6 for the tilted image.
The efficiency of the system is calculated based on single lined number plates of 126,
double lined number plates of 120 and tilted number plates of 80 are considered. The
calculated average efficiency of the system is 95.69%, but for single lined number
plates are 100%, double lined number plates are 98.33%, and tilted number plates
are 88.75% is indicated in Table 1.
The work has scope for improvement in various aspects such as relative motion
between camera and vehicle introduces blur in the image and the segmented license
plate will have blurred characters. This will pose challenges at the recognition stage.
Campus Vehicle Monitoring Through Image Processing 313

Fig. 6 Recognition for tilted unauthorized license plate shown if Fig. 5

Table 1 System performance Types No. of No. of Percentage

calculation using types images images
identified
Single line 126 126 100
numbers
Double line 120 118 98.33
numbers
Tilted 80 71 88.95
numbers
Average 95.69

Hence, resolution techniques can be used before recognition of characters to over-

come the problem of motion blur. At the same time, the recognition accuracy can
be improved by using more generalized classifiers like Fuzzy classifiers or Neural
Network classifiers, as these classifiers can be trained with huge training data in each
class.

5 Conclusion

This paper presents the new idea to identify the number plates with different style and
improves the overall accuracy of the OCR technique, which seems to be the fastest
and accurate vehicle license plate recognizing platform and failure rate is much less
when compared to other methods. As the template matching technique disturbs the
required accuracy of number plate recognition, a fusion of Microsoft API and OCR
can be done to improve the performance of the system in extraction of license plate
from the rest of the image.

Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank all owners of the vehicle who have given the number
plate image for testing the Vehicle Monitoring System.
314 G. Jagadamba et al.

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