Video Sensor-Based Automatic License Plate Recognition of Static and Moving Vehicles

Abstract

In Bangladesh, present transportation system needs suitable control schemes to ensure safety and mobility to the road users. License Plate Recognition (LPR) is one of the control schemes which can be used to ensure road safety using video sensors. Moreover, from installation point of view, it is cheaper than Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) system. Automated LPR is adopted to reduce human involvement which causes loss in accuracy and reliability in reading license plate. The extracted information from LPR can be used in various schemes, such as electronic payment system, traffic surveillance and extracting vehicle trajectory. In this paper, we are presenting an offline dynamic LPR system, which uses geometric properties of Bengali alphabets stored in alphabet template database to recognize license plates from video. The system comprises of three main components: 1) License Plate Locating (LPL), 2) Character Segmentation (CS), and 3) Geometric Character Recognition (GCR). In this regard, the image is converted into a binary image considering morphological operations and color modification. A new ratio-based detection algorithm has been proposed for the segmentation of license plate. Finally, the alphabet template database and the character extracted from detected license plate are correlated to recognize alphanumeric character which deduces the plate number. Thus, the plate number can be utilized for further action.