• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
• /
• v.13 no.5
• /
• pp.2509-2528
• /
• 2019

There are various styles of license plates for different countries and use cases that require style-specific methods. In this paper, we propose and illustrate a multi-style license plate recognition system. The proposed system performs a series of processes for license plate candidates detection, structure classification, character segmentation and character recognition, respectively. Specifically, we introduce a license plate structure classification process to identify its style that precedes character segmentation and recognition processes. We use a K-Nearest Neighbors algorithm with pre-training steps to recognize numbers and characters on multi-style license plates. To show feasibility of our multi-style license plate recognition system, we evaluate our system for multi-style license plates covering single line, double line, different backgrounds and character colors on Korean and the U.S. license plates. For the evaluation of Korean license plate recognition, we used a 50 minutes long input video that contains 138 vehicles of 6 different license plate styles, where each frame of the video is processed through a series of license plate recognition processes. From two experiments results, we show that various LP styles can be recognized under 50 ms processing time and with over 99% accuracy, and can be extended through additional learning and training steps.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
• /
• v.24 no.6_2
• /
• pp.699-706
• /
• 2021

Existing license plate recognition system is used as an optical character recognition method, but a method of using deep learning has been proposed in recent studies because it has problems with image quality and Korean misrecognition. This requires a lot of data collection, but the collection of license plates is not easy to collect due to the problem of the Personal Information Protection Act, and labeling work to designate the location of individual license plates is required, but it also requires a lot of time. Therefore, in this paper, to solve this problem, five types of license plates were created using a virtual Korean license plate generation program according to the notice of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. And the generated license plate is synthesized in the license plate part of collectable vehicle images to construct 10,147 learning data to be used in deep learning. The learning data classifies license plates, Korean, and numbers into individual classes and learn using YOLOv5. Since the proposed method recognizes letters and numbers individually, if the font does not change, it can be recognized even if the license plate standard changes or the number of characters increases. As a result of the experiment, an accuracy of 96.82% was obtained, and it can be applied not only to the learned license plate but also to new types of license plates such as new license plates and eco-friendly license plates.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
• /
• v.20 no.6
• /
• pp.97-105
• /
• 2021

Recently, with the development of IT technology, unmanned systems are being introduced in many industrial fields, and one of the most important factors for introducing unmanned systems in the automobile field is vehicle licence plate recognition(VLPR). The existing VLPR algorithms are configured to use image processing for a specific type of license plate to divide individual areas of a character within the plate to recognize each character. However, as the number of Korean vehicle license plates increases, the law is amended, there are old-fashioned license plates, new license plates, and different types of plates are used for each type of vehicle. Therefore, it is necessary to update the VLPR system every time, which incurs costs. In this paper, we use an object detection algorithm to detect character regardless of the format of the vehicle license plate, and apply a handwritten Hangul recognition(HHR) algorithm to enhance the recognition accuracy of a single Hangul character, which is called a Hangul unit. Since Hangul unit is recognized by combining initial consonant, medial vowel and final consonant, so it is possible to use other Hangul units in addition to the 40 Hangul units used for the Korean vehicle license plate.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
• /
• v.6 no.4
• /
• pp.444-447
• /
• 2008

In this paper, we proposed the recognition system of car license plates to mitigate traffic problems. The processing sequence of the proposed algorithm is as follows. At first, a license plate segment is extracted from an acquired car image using morphological features and color information, and noises are eliminated from the extracted license plate segment using line scan algorithm and Grassfire algorithm, and then individual codes are extracted from the license plate segment using edge tracking algorithm. Finally the extracted individual codes are recognized by an FCM algorithm. In order to evaluate performance of segment extraction and code recognition of the proposed method, we used 100 car images for experiment. In the results, we could verify the proposed method is more effective and recognition performance is improved in comparison with conventional car license plate recognition methods.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
• /
• v.49 no.12
• /
• pp.113-123
• /
• 2012

Recently, various attempts have been made to apply Intelligent Transportation System under various environments and conditions. Consequently, an accurate license plate recognition regardless of vehicle location and viewing angle is required. In this paper, we propose a novel license plate recognition system which exploits a) the format of license plates to remove false candidates of license plates and to extract characters in license plates and b) the characteristics of Hangul for accurate character recognition. In order to eliminate false candidates of license plates, the proposed method first aligns the candidates of license plates horizontally, and compares the position and the shape of objects in each candidate with the prior information of license plates provided by Korean Ministry of Construction & Transportation. The prior information such as aspect ratio, background color, projection image is also used to extract characters in license plates accurately applying an improved local binarization considering luminance variation of license plates. In case of recognizing Hangul in license plates, they are initially grouped according to their shape similarity. Then a super-class method, a hierarchical analysis based on key feature points is applied to recognize Hangul accurately. The proposed method was verified with high recognition rate regardless of background image, which eventually proves that the proposed LPR system has high performance regardless of the vehicle location or viewing angle.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
• /
• 2002.07b
• /
• pp.1256-1259
• /
• 2002

In this paper, we have proposed license plate recognition system for multi-national vehicle license plate using geometric features along with hybrid and seven segment pattern vectors. In the proposed system, we suggested to find horizontal and vertical relation after going through preparation process with inputted real-time license plate image of Korea and Japan, and then to classify license plate with using characteristic and geometric information of license plates. It classifies the extracted license plate images into letters and numbers, such as local name, local number, classification character and license consecutive numbers, and recognize license plate of Korea and Japan by applying hybrid and seven segments pattern vectors to classified letter and number region. License plate extraction step of the proposed system uses width and length information along with relative rate of Korean and Japanese license plate. Moreover, it exactly segmentation by letters with using each letter and number position information within license plate region, and recognizes Korean and Japanese license plates by applying hybrid and seven segment pattern vectors, containing characteristics related to letter size and movement within segmented letter area. As the result of testing the proposed system in real experiment, it recognized regardless of external lighting conditions as well as classifying license plates by nations, Korea and Japan. We have developed a system, recognizing regardless of inputted structural character of vehicle licenses and external environment.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
• /
• v.7 no.4
• /
• pp.833-838
• /
• 2003

This paper presents novel methods of recognizing license plates of passing vehicles outdo(n. In particular, the proposed method is much robust for inclined plates caused by the changes of camera placement. To acquire fine images of quickly passing vehicles under a wide range of illumination conditions, we developed a sensing system having superb characteristics. We expanded the dynamic range and eliminated the blurring of images of fast moving vehicles by synthesizing a pair of synchronized images with different intensities. furthermore, to extend the flexibility of the positioning of the TV camera, we propose a recognition algorithm that can be applied to inclined plates. The performance of the integrated system was investigated on real images of vehicles captured under various illumination conditions. The recognition rates of over 99% (conventional plates) and over 97% (highly inclined plates) shows that the developed system is effective for license plate recognition.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
• /
• v.14B no.2
• /
• pp.81-88
• /
• 2007

We implement automobile license plates recognition system. These days automobile license plate recognition systems are widely used for tracing stolen cars. managing parking facilities, ticketing speeding cars, and so on. Recognition systems largely consist of three parts plates extraction, segments extraction, and segment recognition. For plates extraction, we measure the degree of inclination of plate. We use filters that extract only the horizontal components of the front of an automobile to measure the degree of inclination. For segment extraction, we trace the change of the number of blocks that consist solely of foreground pixels or background pixels as the horizontal scanning line moves along upward. For recognition of each individual letter or digit, we devise a variant of template matching method, called comparative template matching. Through experiments, we show that comparative template matching is less prone misled by noises and exhibits higher performance compared to the traditional method of template matching or histogram based recognition.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
• /
• 2006.05a
• /
• pp.792-795
• /
• 2006

In this paper, we propose a method of vehicle license plate recognition on PDA for illegal parking car regulation. we classified three kinds of vehicle license plates being used down to date since the introduction of each vehicle license Plate using features of each one. And we recognized vehicle license plates segmentation the AreaName, the AreaCode, the TypeCharacter and the Numbers. A 88.7% recognition accuracy was obtained through the experiment of the proposed vehicle license plate recognition system using the obtained images of PDA.

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