• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.29-35
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• 2021

License plate recognition plays a key role in intelligent transportation systems. Therefore, it is a very important process to efficiently detect the number and character areas. In this paper, we propose a method to effectively detect license plate number area by applying deep learning and semantic image segmentation algorithm. The proposed method is an algorithm that detects number and text areas directly from the license plate without preprocessing such as pixel projection. The license plate image was acquired from a fixed camera installed on the road, and was used in various real situations taking into account both weather and lighting changes. The input images was normalized to reduce the color change, and the deep learning neural networks used in the experiment were Vgg16, Vgg19, ResNet18, and ResNet50. To examine the performance of the proposed method, we experimented with 500 license plate images. 300 sheets were used for learning and 200 sheets were used for testing. As a result of computer simulation, it was the best when using ResNet50, and 95.77% accuracy was obtained.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.11 no.11
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• pp.1515-1524
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• 2008

This paper proposes a method that detects a license plate in complex background using a multiple-color model and character layout information. A layout of a green license plate is different from that of a white license plate. So, this study used a strategy that firstly assumes the plate color and then utilizes its layout information. At first, it extracts green areas from an input image using a multiple-color model which combined HIS and YIQ color models with RGB color model. If green areas are detected, it searches the character layout of the green plate by analyzing the connected components in each areas. If not detected, it searches the character layout of the white plate in all area. Finally, it extracts a license plate by grouping the connected components which corresponds to characters. Experimental result shows that 98.1% of 419 input images are correctly detected. It also shows that the proposed method is robust against illumination, shadow, and weather condition.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.1-8
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• 2011

Automatic vehicle license plate recognition technology is widely used in gate control and parking control of vehicles, and police enforcement of illegal vehicles. However inherent geometric information of the license plate can be transformed in the vehicle images due to the slant and the sunlight or lighting environment. In this paper, a distortion invariant vehicle license plate extraction and recognition algorithm is proposed. First, a binary image reserving clean character strokes can be achieved by using a DoG filter. A plate area can be extracted by using the location of consecutive digit numbers that reserves distortion invariant characteristic. License plate is recognized by using neural networks after geometric distortion correction and image enhancement. The simulation results of the proposed algorithm show that the accuracy is 98.4% and the average speed is 0.05 seconds in the recognition of 6,200 vehicle images that are obtained by using commercial LPR system.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.597-604
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• 2009

For the improvement of license plate recognition system, correct extraction of a license plate region as well as character recognition is important. In this paper, with the analysis and classification of the error patterns in the process of plate region extraction, we tried to improve the extraction of the region using HoG(histogram of gradient) features and Adaboost. The results show that the HoG feature is robust to the noise and various types of the plates, and also is very effective to extract the region failed before.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2001.09a
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• pp.455-458
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• 2001

In this paper, a new license plate recognition method using the morphological size distribution functions and color images is proposed. The proposed method consists of two steps. The first step is license plate extraction process using the plate color and step edge information in the license plate. The second step is the extraction of character feature vectors using the morphological size distribution functions and character recognition process using the MLP(multilayer perceptron). By the use of morphological size distributions functions, the error that may occur during the character region extraction process is lessened and the recognition performances are improved by the decrease of feature vector dimension.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.411-419
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• 2020

In real-world intelligent transportation systems, accuracy in vehicle license plate detection and recognition is considered quite critical. Many algorithms have been proposed for still images, but their accuracy on actual videos is not satisfactory. This stems from several problematic conditions in videos, such as vehicle motion blur, variety in viewpoints, outliers, and the lack of publicly available video datasets. In this study, we focus on these challenges and propose a license plate detection and recognition scheme for videos based on a temporal matching prior network. Specifically, to improve the robustness of detection and recognition accuracy in the presence of motion blur and outliers, forward and bidirectional matching priors between consecutive frames are properly combined with layer structures specifically designed for plate detection. We also built our own video dataset for the deep training of the proposed network. During network training, we perform data augmentation based on image rotation to increase robustness regarding the various viewpoints in videos.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.1188-1194
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• 2018

This paper proposes an image enhancement-based license plate detection algorithm to improve the overall performance of system. Non-uniform illumination conditions have huge impact on overall plate detection system accuracy. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for color image enhancement-based license plate detection for improving accuracy of images degraded by excessively strong and low sunlight. Firstly, the image is enhanced by Multi-Scale Retinex algorithm. Secondly, a plate detection method is employed to take advantage of geometric properties of connected components, which can significantly reduce the undesired plate regions. Finally, intersection over union method is applied for detecting the accurate location of number plate. Experimental results show that the proposed method significantly improves the accuracy of plate detection system.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics C
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• v.36C no.1
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• pp.73-81
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• 1999

This paper describes the methods which segment more efficiently the car license plate and the character region by using 1-D DCT. In the car images, a license plate region and a character region of the license plate can be distingushed by the regular high frequency components from the car images. In this method, it is shown that the regular high frequency componets are extracted by using DCT and license plate region is segmented in the car image and the caracter region is then seperated at the extracted license plate by using the previously extracted regular high frequency components. Some experiment results of the various images are shown. It has been shown from the results that the car license plates and the character regions can be segmented more exactly and efficiently than conventional methods.

• 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.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.5 no.11
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• pp.511-520
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• 2016

Automatic License Plate Detection (ALPD) is a key technology for a efficient traffic control. It is used to improve work efficiency in many applications such as toll payment systems and parking and traffic management. Until recently, the hand-crafted features made for image processing are used to detect license plates in most studies. It has the advantage in speed. but can degrade the detection rate with respect to various environmental changes. In this paper, we propose a way to utilize a Faster Region based Convolutional Neural Networks (Faster R-CNN) and a Conventional Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), which improves the computational speed and is robust against changed environments. The module based on Faster R-CNN is used to detect license plate candidate regions from images and is followed by the module based on CNN to remove False Positives from the candidates. As a result, we achieved a detection rate of 99.94% from images captured under various environments. In addition, the average operating speed is 80ms/image. We implemented a fast and robust Real-Time License Plate Detection System.