Proposal for Automatic License and Number Plate Recognition System for Vehicle Identification

In this paper, we propose an automatic and mechanized license and number plate recognition (LNPR) system which can extract the license plate number of the vehicles passing through a given location using image processing algorithms. No additional devices such as GPS or radio frequency identification (RFID) need to be installed for implementing the proposed system. Using special cameras, the system takes pictures from each passing vehicle and forwards the image to the computer for being processed by the LPR software. Plate recognition software uses different algorithms such as localization, orientation, normalization, segmentation and finally optical character recognition (OCR). The resulting data is applied to compare with the records on a database. Experimental results reveal that the presented system successfully detects and recognizes the vehicle number plate on real images. This system can also be used for security and traffic control. Keywords— License and number plate recognition (LNPR) system, image processing, orientation, normalization, segmentation, identification, optical character recognition (OCR).