Number Plate Detection System by Using the Night Images

License plate recognition is very important in an automobile society. This is because, since plate detection accuracy has large influence on subsequent number recognition, it is very important. However, it is very difficult to do it, because a background and a body color of cars are similar to that of the license plate. In this paper, we propose a new thresholds determination method in the various background by using the real-coded genetic algorithm (RGA). By using RGA, the most likely plate colors are decided under various lighting conditions. First, the average brightness Y values of images are calculated. Next, relationship between the Y value and the most likely plate color thresholds (upper and lower bounds)are obtained by RGA. The relationship between thresholds decided from RGA and brightness average is aproximate by using the recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm. In the case of plate detection, thresholds are decided from these functions.