ANPR

Automatic number plate recognition

Requested by: Mr. Rami Hajeomar

By: Maha Bamatraf

Date: 9-Aug-2010
Definition:
Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) is a technology used to
recognize characters on a vehicle license plate. Optical Character
Recognition (OCR) is the fundamental technology used in ANPR, OCR scans
each group of pixels and estimates whether or not it could be a letter and
replaces the pixels with the ASCII code for the letter. The ANPR consists of
software that extracts the ACSII code from the captured image and hardware
which is the camera that captures the plate number image.

Functionality:

As a vehicle approaches the camera the software takes a series of snapshots

and stores them in a file. When the number plate is of sufficient size for the
OCR software the frame is scanned and the registration number is converted
to ASCII code and held in a list. This continues for a series of images
according to the speed and position of the vehicle. The system would
typically scan and compare 10-15 images, with 5 being considered the
minimum for high accuracy and this depends on the type of software being
used, some software’s requires only one image at a certain distance.

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Important parameters:
ANPR cameras need to be a special type and set up within certain important
parameters such as the correct set up of camera, lens, illumination, angle of
view and configuration, if one of the previous parameters was wrong the
result will be wrong as well.

Applications:
The following points are some of the major applications where ANPR can be
used:

1: Parking: ANPR provides parking automation and parking security and it

can be used in ticketless parking fee management, parking access
automation, vehicle location guidance, car theft prevention, lost ticket fraud,
fraud by changing tickets.

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. 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.

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. 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 management: 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.

Infrared illumination:

If a standard color or monochrome camera was focused to read number

plates it would have to contend with a huge variety of lighting conditions,
daytime, night-time, sunlight, backlight, headlights, and so on. One
configuration simply would not cope with all conditions, so there is a need to
provide a constant level and direction of illumination irrespective of any
other conditions. And so we come to the development of special cameras for
continuous capture of number plate data.

The camera must be sensitive to the infrared part of the spectrum, to at

least 850 nanometers. Then it must be fitted with a filter to restrict the
visible part of the spectrum. The lens would have a manual iris set fully open
and the shutter speed set to 1/1000th second. Finally an infrared source
must be fitted adjacent to the camera.

Therefore, taking advantage of the retro-reflective characteristics of number

plates, the illumination from the illuminator will be reflected directly back to
the camera. Thus only infrared light will be seen without any visible light or
other reflections or refractions. The picture will of course be black with no
detail except for the number plate. The OCR software then takes care of
converting the image to usable code.

Note that this is the sort of image on the monitor both day and night.
Flow chart for ANPR system:

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References:
Anonymous. (n.d.). An Introduction to anpr. Retrieved from

information.co.uk/i/An_Introduction_to_ANPR . Retrieved on 8-Aug-2010.

Anonymous. Automatic number plate recognition. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.anpr.net/anpr_09/anpr_applicationareas.html. Retrieved on 8-Aug-

2010.