Design and Implementation of an Automated Car Plate Number Recognition System
Chapter One
Aim and Objectives of the study
The aim of this research work is to develop an application that will provide access control through automated car plate recognition.
The objectives of this study are as follows;
- To assist law enforcement agencies in tracking stolen vehicles
- To design a database that will serve as a repository for car plate numbers already registered.
- To design a responsive system for crime detection
- To ensure quick collection of data about vehicles within the scope of study.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
PREAMBLE
This chapter focuses on the review of other author’s contribution in relevant areas of study. It will cover the following areas:
Concept of Automated Number-plate Recognition
Automatic number-plate recognition (ANPR; see also other names below) is a technology that uses optical character recognition on images to read vehicle registration plates to create vehicle location data. It can use existing closed-circuit television, road-rule enforcement cameras, or cameras specifically designed for the task. ANPR is used by police forces around the world for law enforcement purposes, including to check if a vehicle is registered or licensed. It is also used for electronic toll collection on pay-per-use roads and as a method of cataloguing the movements of traffic, for example by highways agencies.
Automatic number-plate recognition can be used to store the images captured by the cameras as well as the text from the license plate, with some configurable to store a photograph of the driver. Systems commonly use infrared lighting to allow the camera to take the picture at any time of day or night.[1][2] ANPR technology must take into account plate variations from place to place. Du, Shan; Ibrahim, Mahmoud; Shehata, Mohamed; Badawy, Wael (2017).
Privacy issues have caused concerns about ANPR, such as government tracking citizens’ movements, misidentification, high error rates, and increased government spending. Critics have described it as a form of mass surveillance. Martinsky, Ondrej (2007).
Development
ANPR was invented in 1976 at the Police Scientific Development Branch in Britain. Prototype systems were working by 1979, and contracts were awarded to produce industrial systems, first at EMI Electronics, and then at Computer Recognition Systems (CRS, now part of Jenoptik) in Wokingham, UK. Early trial systems were deployed on the A1 road and at the Dartford Tunnel. The first arrest through detection of a stolen car was made in 1981. However, ANPR did not become widely used until new developments in cheaper and easier to use software were pioneered during the 1990s. The collection of ANPR data for future use (i.e., in solving then-unidentified crimes) was documented in the early 2000s.[6] The first documented case of ANPR being used to help solve a murder occurred in November 2005, in Bradford, UK, where ANPR played a vital role in locating and subsequently convicting killers of Sharon Beshenivsky. Draghici, Sorin (2004).
Components
The software aspect of the system runs on standard home computer hardware and can be linked to other applications or databases. It first uses a series of image manipulation techniques to detect, normalize and enhance the image of the number plate, and then optical character recognition (OCR) to extract the alphanumerics of the license plate. ANPR systems are generally deployed in one of two basic approaches: one allows for the entire process to be performed at the lane location in real-time, and the other transmits all the images from many lanes to a remote computer location and performs the OCR process there at some later point in time. When done at the lane site, the information captured of the plate alphanumeric, date-time, lane identification, and any other information required is completed in approximately 250 milliseconds. This information can easily be transmitted to a remote computer for further processing if necessary, or stored at the lane for later retrieval. In the other arrangement, there are typically large numbers of PCs used in a server farm to handle high workloads, such as those found in the London congestion charge project. Often in such systems, there is a requirement to forward images to the remote server, and this can require larger bandwidth transmission media.
Technology
The font on Dutch plates was changed to improve plate recognition.
ANPR uses optical character recognition (OCR) on images taken by cameras. When Dutch vehicle registration plates switched to a different style in 2002, one of the changes made was to the font, introducing small gaps in some letters (such as P and R) to make them more distinct and therefore more legible to such systems. Some license plate arrangements use variations in font sizes and positioning—ANPR systems must be able to cope with such differences in order to be truly effective. More complicated systems can cope with international variants, though many programs are individually tailored to each country.
The cameras used can be existing road-rule enforcement or closed-circuit television cameras, as well as mobile units, which are usually attached to vehicles. Some systems use infrared cameras to take a clearer image of the plates. Kwaśnicka, Halina; Wawrzyniak, Bartosz (2002).
In mobile systems
The Dubai police use ANPR cameras to monitor vehicles in front and either side of the patrol car.
A Merseyside Police car equipped with mobile ANPR
During the 1990s, significant advances in technology took automatic number-plate recognition (ANPR) systems from limited expensive, hard to set up, fixed based applications to simple “point and shoot” mobile ones. This was made possible by the creation of software that ran on cheaper PC based, non-specialist hardware that also no longer needed to be given the pre-defined angles, direction, size and speed in which the plates would be passing the camera’s field of view. Further scaled-down components at more cost-effective price points led to a record number of deployments by law enforcement agencies around the world. Smaller cameras with the ability to read license plates at higher speeds, along with smaller, more durable processors that fit in the trunks of police vehicles, allowed law enforcement officers to patrol daily with the benefit of license plate reading in real time, when they can interdict immediately.
CHAPTER THREE
SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND METHODS
Research Methodology
Robinson et al, 1970 define system analysis as the methodological study of a system, its current and the future required objectives and procedures in order to inform a basis for the system and the design. Jerry, 1989 also define system analysis as the process of analyzing system with the potential goals of improving and modifying it. In other words, system analysis is the detailed look at the current system and what a new system will be required to do; system analysis always leads to system design which is the development of new system that will meet the future requirements. The basic tool of system analysis is the ability is to prove, enquire, observe more and reconciles all what happens in any situation. With this alone, the information gathered is analyzed to identify the components of the system, creating a structure from which the essential requirements can most efficiently be met. The scope of the research covers the Motor Licensing office Abuja in the registration of vehicle and identification of missing vehicles in the country.
Fact Finding Method Used
The data used in the study were collected from two sources of data collection, the primary and secondary source. Primary Source: This involves oral interviews conducted with various personnel in the licensing office Enugu state, the licensing office and the Board of Internal Revenue in reviewing and sharing their experience about 53 the difficulties they undergo in using the manual system in vehicle and plate number registration issuance and allocation. Secondary Source: These include the use of textbooks, dictionary, journals newspaper and Internet downloads to collect data in order to understand what the vehicle and plate number registration and identification is all about. Close Observation Method: This involves my personal visit to the Motor Licensing office Enugu. I observed the untidiness of the offices, long queue of the vehicle owners and the difficulties the staff face in preparing these documents.
CHAPTER FOUR
DESIGN, IMPLEMENTATION AND TESTING OF THE NEW SYSTEM
There is need for one to design system by showing what the system entails, identifying and defining the various components of the system before the actual implementation. The whole aim is to determine how the information can be built. This gives the design the chance of making a choice of the way the problem can best be solved.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Summary
Automated car plate number recognition used to involve manual recording of vehicles information, which ranges from cars to buses and later to truck and heavy duty equipment. Plate number recognition in Nigeria began over 100 years ago and the records have been essentially manual which in turn is not helped to raise the efficiency of general automotive services in recent years. The federal government of Nigeria has identified economic development as a major for achieving the 2020 socio-economic development. The vehicle plate number recognition system is a must for any country that wants to be information and communication technology inclined and ready to reduce the car crime rate and corruption in her system.
Conclusion
The understanding of the problems that very peculiar to old car plate number recognition system was opened up also in the chapter one and three of this project these problems includes ineffective, time consuming, tedious, in accurate, inconsistent etc. which vary from operating system compatibility to machine dependencies. However big a software project is, these problems and more are what they face and the bigger the software are project the more probable it is that they face these problems. When the first computer was designed, the development of all that came after the first computer is founded on the concept of the very first and now it has gone from development of just computers to the development of software as this project is done so far. Vehicle Registration in Nigeria began over 100 years ago and the records have been essentially manual which in turn has not help to raise the efficiency of general automoted services in recent years. This was only focused on vehicle registration and inspection, and not on other supporting services such as vehicle tracking, learner’s driving permission, and drivers’ license management, monitoring of drivers and vehicles operations and documentation of both accident and crime report.
Recommendations
If one thing must be researched in the Computerization of car plate number recognition system with the mind of perfecting it and making it more useful in the real sense of things, it is the security of information handling software. The security of car plate number recognition system is very crucial considering the prevention of vehicle crime and similar vices so it is worth further researching. Therefore, I Recommend that motor licensing office in Abuja should set up a computer based system.
REFERENCES
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- “An Approach To License Plate Recognition” (PDF). University of Calgary. 1996. Retrieved 24 January 2012.[permanent dead link]
- “An introduction to ANPR”. Cctv-information.co.uk. Retrieved 11 March 2017.
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