• 전기전자학회논문지
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• 제22권4호
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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.

• 한국통신학회논문지
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• 제38C권12호
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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.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제60권4호
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• pp.667-691
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• 2016

This study focuses on the damage detection of defect types in plate structures based on wavelet transform (WT) and curvelet transform (CT). In particular, for damage detection of structures these transforms have been developed since the last few years. In recent years, the CT approach has been also introduced in an attempt to overcome inherent limitations of traditional multi-scale representations such as wavelets. In this study, the performance of CT is compared with WT in order to demonstrate the capability of WT and CT in detection of defect types in plate structures. To achieve this purpose, the damage detection of defect types through defect shape in rectangular plate is investigated. By using the first mode shape of plate structure and the distribution of the coefficients of the transforms, the damage existence, the defect location and the approximate shape of defect are detected. Moreover, the accuracy and performance generality of the transforms are verified through using experimental modal data of a plate.

• 한국컴퓨터정보학회논문지
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• 제20권7호
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• pp.25-32
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• 2015

In this paper, we propose a license plate detection method of running cars in various road images. The proposed method first classifies the road image into day and night images to improve detection accuracy, and then the tail-light regions are detected by finding red color areas in RGB color space. The candidate regions of the license plate areas are detected by using symmetrical property, size, width and variance of the tail-light regions, and to find the license plate areas of the various sizes the morphological operations with adaptive size structuring elements are applied. Finally, the plate area is verified and confirmed with the geometrical and image features of the license plate areas. The proposed method was tested with the various road images and the detection rates (precisions) of 84.2% of day images and 87.4% of night images were achieved.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 제어로봇시스템학회 2003년도 ICCAS
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• pp.1249-1253
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• 2003

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.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제42권3호
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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.

• 한국컴퓨터정보학회논문지
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• 제26권9호
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• pp.49-55
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• 2021

본 논문에서는 실제 도로에서 기울어진 촬영 각도로 인하여 회전된 차량 번호판을 정확하게 탐지하기 위하여 객체 세그먼테이션(object segmentation)을 이용하는 개선된 2-단계 차량 번호판 탐지 모델을 제안한다. 기존 연구에서 제안한 3-단계 차량 번호판 탐지 파이프라인 모델은 차량 번호판이 많이 기울어져 있을수록 탐지 정확도가 낮아지는 문제가 있다. 이를 해결하기 위해서 기존의 3-단계 모델에서 사각형 형태만으로 차량 후보 영역과 차량 번호판 후보 영역을 인식하는 전위 2개의 처리 단계 대신에 임의의 형태로 객체 탐지가 가능한 객체 세그먼테이션을 이용하는 하나의 단계로 대체함으로써 탐지 과정을 단순화하였으며 궁극적으로는 임의의 형태로 기울어진 차량 이미지에 대해서도 탐지 성능을 개선하였다. 기울어진 차량 번호판 이미지를 대상으로 실시한 차량 번호판 탐지 모델의 정확도 분석 실험 결과에 의하면 기존의 3-단계 차량 번호판 탐지 모델보다 제안된 2-단계 기법이 탐지 과정을 단순화하였음에도 최대 약 20%의 탐지 정확도를 개선할 수 있는 것으로 분석되었다.

• 스마트미디어저널
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• 제9권4호
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• pp.134-143
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• 2020

자동차 번호판 인식 기술은 도로의 교통상황 통제, 과속차량 단속, 도주 차량의 추적 등 현대 교통 시설 및 교통 안전망을 책임지고 있는 핵심 기술 중 하나이다. 이 기법은 과거에도 연구되었던 분야였으나 최근 딥러닝 기술의 발전으로 다양한 기법들을 적용하여 향상된 성능을 보이는 분야이며, 크게 자동차 번호판 검출과 번호판 인식으로 나뉜다. 본 연구에서는 다양한 객체 검출 모델과 WPOD-Net(Warped Planar Object Detection Network) 모델을 활용하여 자동차 번호판 검출 성능을 향상시키기 위한 실험을 진행하였으며, 객체 검출 모델을 활용하여 번호판을 검출하는 기존 방식들 대신 차량을 검출한 다음 번호판을 검출하는 방식을 택하여 정확도를 높였다. 특히 Super-Resolution 기법 중 하나인 Fast-SRGAN 모델을 활용하여 이미지 내에 존재하는 노이즈를 제거하는 처리를 통해 최종 성능을 향상시켰다. 결과적으로 92.38%에서 96.72%로 선행 연구 대비 평균 4.34% 향상된 성능이 실험을 통해 확인되었다.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제37권2호
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• pp.251-261
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• 2015

We present a novel method for real-time automatic license plate detection in high-resolution videos. Although there have been extensive studies of license plate detection since the 1970s, the suggested approaches resulting from such studies have difficulties in processing high-resolution imagery in real-time. Herein, we propose a novel cascade structure, the fastest classifier available, by rejecting false positives most efficiently. Furthermore, we train the classifier using the core patterns of various types of license plates, improving both the computation load and the accuracy of license plate detection. To show its superiority, our approach is compared with other state-of-the-art approaches. In addition, we collected 20,000 images including license plates from real traffic scenes for comprehensive experiments. The results show that our proposed approach significantly reduces the computational load in comparison to the other state-of-the-art approaches, with comparable performance accuracy.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• 제12권1호
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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.