Smart Parking System using Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and the Internet of Things (IoT)

Abstract

India is the sixth largest economy in the world. With the rise in its population, urbanization has become a global phenomenon. Due to this, there has been a rapid increase in the number of vehicles on the road. However, modern infrastructure is failing to provide secure and efficient parking system for these increased vehicles. The problems arise because of the limited parking spaces. The increasing vehicles on the road along with the improper management of the available parking space lead to the parking-related problems as well as an increased traffic jam in the urban areas. Thus, it is highly necessary to develop a smart parking system. This paper involves a parking system that works on automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) algorithm using optical character recognition (OCR). The system consists of a camera at the entrance of the parking gate, which will be used for number plate recognition using digital image processing, and then a parking slot will be allocated depending on the status of the vehicle. Also at the exit, the vehicle number is identified and the information is updated to the cloud using Internet of things (IoT) where it can be monitored. The availability of the parking slots can also be viewed on the mobile through the android app created for ease of public usage. This paper makes excellent use of all the available resources in order to create an efficient solution for the existing situation.