• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.100-108
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• 2016

In this paper, we propose a method to achieve improved number plate detection for mobile devices by applying a multiple convolutional neural network (CNN) approach. First, we processed supervised CNN-verified car detection and then we applied the detected car regions to the next supervised CNN-verifier for number plate detection. In the final step, the detected number plate regions were verified through optical character recognition by another CNN-verifier. Since mobile devices are limited in computation power, we are proposing a fast method to recognize number plates. We expect for it to be used in the field of intelligent transportation systems.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.173-179
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• 2012

In this paper, we presents a new method for vehicle number plate detection. Our method is basically the method extracting a rectangles from a car image because the shape of a vehicle number plate is a rectangle. For detecting the vehicle number plate, firstly, the contrast of the input image is enhanced. Then, the lines in the image are obtained by using LSD(line segment detector), and rectangles in the image are detected from the line data. These rectangles are the candidates of the car plate, from which the car plate is selected. In this procedure, the method of detecting rectangles is our proposed method, which consists of three stages: (1) extracting corners from the line segments by LSD; (2) extracting diagonal lines from the corner data; and (3) detecting rectangles from diagonal line information. And finally the vehicle number plate is selected from these rectangles by using the feature of the vehicle number plate and the inside information of rectangles. In the experiments with the 100 images captured by our digital camera, we have achieved a detection rate of 94%.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2014.11a
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• pp.879-881
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• 2014

A method is proposed to achieve improved number plate detection for mobile devices by applying a two-step convolutional neural network (CNN) approach. Supervised CNN-verified car detection is processed first. In the second step, we apply the detected car regions to the second CNN-verifier for number plate detection. Since mobile devices are limited in computing power, we propose a fast method to detect number plates. We expect to use in the field of intelligent transportation systems (ITS).

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.122-130
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• 2009

Conventional approaches for car number plate detection have dealt with those input images having similar sizes and simple background acquired under well organized environment. Thus their performance get reduced when input images include number plates with different sizes and when they are acquired under different lighting conditions. To solve these problem, this paper proposes a new scheme that uses the geometrical features of number plates and their topological information with reference to other features of the car. In the first step, those edges constructing a rectangle are detected and several pixels neighboring those edges are selected as the seed pixels for region growing. For region growing, color and intensity are used as the features, and the result regions are merged to construct the candidate for a number plate if their features are within a certain boundary. Once the candidates for the number plates are generated then their topological relations with other parts of the car such as lights are tested to finally determine the number plate region. The experimental results have shown that the proposed method can be used even for detecting small size number plates where characters are not visible.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.400-404
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• 2006

We suggest a method to detect rear car license plate of one more cars by using blobs. First, we try to search all of the blobs from an input image based on the difference between objects and background. Second, we obtain rectangles enclosed the blobs, and rectangle clusters by considering the properties, for example, the number, size, distance, position. Third, the cluster is verified by the Support Vector Machine. Even if we only use the adaptive binarization as the preprocessing, the detection ratio is very high.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Computer Information Conference
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• 2009.01a
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• pp.181-184
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• 2009

본 논문은 번호판 내 명암도 대비를 이용한 자동차 번호판 검출 기법을 제안한다. 평균값 필터와 라플라시안 필터를 사용하여 영상의 잡음을 제거하는 동시에 에지 성분을 향상시킨 후 조명 환경 변화에 강인한 번호판 내 명암도 대비 특징을 이용하여 문자 후보를 검출한다. 다음으로 검출된 문자 후보가 열을 이루는 텍스트 후보를 검출하고, 이 영역을 Otsu 이진화 기업을 사용하여 x축에 투영하였을 시 나타나는 패턴을 평가함으로써 최종적으로 자동차 번호판을 검출하게 된다. 제안하는 기법의 성능을 평가하기 위해 다수의 데이터를 사용하여 실험하였고, 이를 분석하여 제안하는 기법의 우수성을 검증하였다.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.313-319
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• 2007

In this paper, we propose a novel method to extract an area of car licence plate and codes of vehicle number from a photographed car image using features on vertical edges and a new Fuzzy neural network algorithm to recognize extracted codes. Prewitt mask is used in searching for vertical edges for detection of an area of vehicle number plate and feature information of vehicle number palate is used to eliminate image noises and extract the plate area and individual codes of vehicle number. Finally, for recognition of extracted codes, we use the proposed Fuzzy neural network algorithm, in which FCM is used as the learning structure between input and middle layers and Max_Min neural network is used as the learning structure within inhibition and output layers. Through a variety of experiments using real 150 images of vehicle, we showed that the proposed method is more efficient than others.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.38C no.12
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• pp.1114-1125
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• 2013

License Plate Detection (LPD) is a key component in automatic license plate recognition system. Despite the success of License Plate Recognition (LPR) methods in the past decades, the problem is quite a challenge due to the diversity of plate formats and multiform outdoor illumination conditions during image acquisition. This paper aims at automatical detection of car license plates via image processing techniques. In this paper, we proposed a real-time and robust method for license plate detection using Heuristic Energy Map(HEM). In the vehicle image, the region of license plate contains many components or edges. We obtain the edge energy values of an image by using the box filter and search for the license plate region with high energy values. Using this energy value information or Heuristic Energy Map(HEM), we can easily detect the license plate region from vehicle image with a very high possibilities. The proposed method consists two main steps: Region of Interest (ROI) Detection and License Plate Detection. This method has better performance in speed and accuracy than the most of existing methods used for license plate detection. The proposed method can detect a license plate within 130 milliseconds and its detection rate is 99.2% on a 3.10-GHz Intel Core i3-2100(with 4.00 GB of RAM) personal computer.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.776-788
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• 2020

In this paper, a vehicle type recognition system using deep learning and a license plate recognition system are proposed. In the existing system, the number plate area extraction through image processing and the character recognition method using DNN were used. These systems have the problem of declining recognition rates as the environment changes. Therefore, the proposed system used the one-stage object detection method YOLO v3, focusing on real-time detection and decreasing accuracy due to environmental changes, enabling real-time vehicle type and license plate character recognition with one RGB camera. Training data consists of actual data for vehicle type recognition and license plate area detection, and synthetic data for license plate character recognition. The accuracy of each module was 96.39% for detection of car model, 99.94% for detection of license plates, and 79.06% for recognition of license plates. In addition, accuracy was measured using YOLO v3 tiny, a lightweight network of YOLO v3.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.713-725
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• 2019

Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) is a technology required for many applications such as Intelligent Transportation Systems and Video Surveillance Systems. Most of the studies have studied were about the detection and recognition of license plates on cars, and there is very little about detecting and recognizing license plates on motorbikes. In the case of a car, the license plate is located at the front or rear center of the vehicle and is a straight or slightly sloped license plate. Also, the background of the license plate is mainly monochromatic, and license plate detection and recognition process is less complicated. However since the motorbike is parked by using a kickstand, it is inclined at various angles when parked, so the process of recognizing characters on the motorbike license plate is more complicated. In this paper, we have developed a 2-stage YOLOv2 algorithm to detect the area of a license plate after detection of a motorbike area in order to improve the recognition accuracy of license plate for motorbike data set parked at various angles. In order to increase the detection rate, the size and number of the anchor boxes were adjusted according to the characteristics of the motorbike and license plate. Image warping algorithms were applied after detecting tilted license plates. As a result of simulating the license plate character recognition process, the proposed method had the recognition rate of license plate of 80.23% compared to the recognition rate of the conventional method(YOLOv2 without image warping) of 47.74%. Therefore, the proposed method can increase the recognition of tilted motorbike license plate character by using the adjustment of anchor boxes and the image warping which fit the motorbike license plate.