Automatic License Plate Recognition Using MATLAB

A MINOR PROJECT PROGRESS REPORT

Submitted by
Daman Singh Walia,RollNo: N082134,

Ashish Aggarwal and Shubham sharma

Roll No: 12514802813 and 12414802813

in partial fulfilment of minor project for the award of the degree

of

BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY
IN

ELECTRONICS AND COMM ENGINEERING

Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology

Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha

University, Delhi
2013-2017

CONTENTS

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

INTRODUCTION
PRINCIPLE OF OPEARTION
SOFTWARE USED
HARDWARE USED
ALGORITHM

3
4
5
5
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AUTOMATIC LICENSE PLATE RECOGNITION

Introduction:
LPR (License Plate Recognition) is an image-processing technology used to identify vehicles
by their license plates. The ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) using ALR (Automatic line
Tracking Robot) is a system designed to help in recognition of number plates of vehicles. This system is
designed for the purpose of the security and it is a security system. This system is based on the image
processing system. This system helps in the functions like detection of the number plates of the vehicles,
processing them and using processed data for further processes like storing, allowing vehicle to pass or to
reject vehicle. This system also helps to conduct the graphic images of the vehicles which can be further stored
in the database in text format reducing size of data to be stored.
This technology is used in various security and traffic applications, such as the accesscontrol system. This technology is gaining popularity in security and traffic installations. The
technology concept assumes that all vehicles already have the identity displayed (the plate!)
so no additional transmitter or responder is required to be installed on the car.
The above image of the front side of the car, shown in a typical format, is composed of 256
grey levels ranging from black (grey level 0) to white (grey level 255). For a typical format
there are 768 X 288 pixels (Picture Elements), or about 0.2 Million elements. This vast
amount of information is processed by the recognition software in order to automatically
locate and read the plate.
The computer processing needs to work on the global information (the entire image) for
detecting the plate, then zoom into the data in order to handle the small details and finally
extract the registration data. The end result of the recognition process is a string. This
transformation of the image data into a result string is actually a very large compression of
the original raw data (1:31600 !).
Early LPR systems sufferred from a low recognition rate, lower than required by practical
systems. The external effects (sun and headlights, bad plates, wide number of plates types)
and the limited level of the recognition software and vision hardware yielded low quality
systems.
However, recent improvements in the software and hardware have made the LPR systems
much more reliable and wide spread. You can now find these systems in numerous
installations and the numbers of systems are growing exponentially, efficiently automating
more and more tasks in different market segments. In many cases the LPR unit is added as
retrofit in addition to existing solutions, such as a magnetic card reader or ticket
dispenser/reader, in order to add more functionality to the existing facility.
The system uses illumination (such as Infra-red) and a camera to take the image of the front
or rear of the vehicle, then an image-processing software analyzes the images and extracts the
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plate information. This data is used for enforcement, data collection, and (as in the accesscontrol system featured above) can be used to open a gate if the car is authorized or keep a
time record on the entry or exit for automatic payment calculations.
The LPR system significant advantage is that the system can keep an image record of the
vehicle which is useful in order to fight crime and fraud ("an image is worth a thousand
words"). An additional camera can focus on the driver face and save the image for security
reasons. Additionally, this technology does not need any installation per car (such as in all the
other technologies that require a transmitter added on each car or carried by the driver).
Following objectives are :
1. To be familiar with image processing technique for detection of Number plate area.
2. To be familiar with OCR.
3. To be familiar with MATLAB software.
4. To interface hardware using parallel port of the computer.

Principle of Operation:
Automatic License Plate Recognition Using MATLAB takes place through Digital image
processing technology. Image Processing generally involves extraction of useful information
from an image. This useful information may be the dimensions of an engineering component,
size of diagnosed tumor, or even a 3D view of an unborn baby. The main areas of application
of Image Processing are Bio-Medical, Engineering, Quality Control, Face Detection , Traffic
Control etc.

Software Used:

MATLAB R2008a
Webcam Driver

Hardware Used:

Web cam

Parallel port connector

AT89s52 microcontroller

40 pin IC holder

White Leds

LDRs

Voltage comparator IC (LM324)

Resistors, Variable Resistors

Crystal oscillators

Inverting Buffer 4049

5

Relays

Capacitors

Block Diagram
System Block Diagram
Image Processing
ALR
[as vehicle]

Web camera

Capturing

Conditioning
Detection
Segmentation
Identification

Door Control

Parallel Port

Template

Save

Microcontroller AT89S52:
The AT89S52 is a low-power, high-performance CMOS 8-bit microcontroller with 4K bytes
of In-System Programmable Flash memory. The device is manufactured using Atmels high
density nonvolatile memory technology and is compatible with the industry standard 80C51
instruction set and pinout.The on-chip Flash allows the program memory to be reprogrammed
in-system or by a conventional nonvolatile memory programmer. By combining a versatile 8
bit CPU with In-System Programmable Flash on a monolithic chip, the Atmel AT89S51 is a
powerful microcontroller which provides a highly-flexible and cost-effective solution to
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many embedded control applications. The AT89S51 provides the following standard features:
4K bytes of Flash, 128 bytes of RAM, 32 I/O lines, Watchdog timer, two data pointers, two
16-bit timer/counters, a five-vector two-level interrupt architecture, a full duplex serial port,
on-chip oscillator, and clock circuitry. In addition, the AT89S51 is designed with static logic
for operation down to zero frequency and supports two software selectable power saving
modes.
The Idle Mode stops the CPU while allowing the RAM, timer/counters, serial port, and
interrupt system to continue functioning. The Power-down mode saves the RAM con-tents
but
freezes the oscillator, disabling all other chip functions until the next external interrupt or
hardware reset.

Features
Compatible with MCS-51 Products
4K Bytes of In-System Programmable (ISP) Flash Memory
Endurance: 1000 Write/Erase Cycles
4.0V to 5.5V Operating Range
Fully Static Operation: 0 Hz to 33 MHz
Three-level Program Memory Lock
128 x 8-bit Internal RAM
32 Programmable I/O Lines
Two 16-bit Timer/Counters

PIN DIAGRAM
ALGORITHM:
1. Input image from webcam.
2. Convert image into binary.
3. Detect number plate area.
4. Segmentation.
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5. Number identification.
6. Save to file in given format

1. Input Image from file

1. Capture image from webcam..
2. Store the captured image into a image file for further processing.

2. Convert image into binary

1. Identify the intensity of the image.
If image intensity = high
Reduce intensity
Else if intensity = low
Increase intensity
Else
No change.
2. Convert image into grayscale.
3. Calculate appropriate threshold value for the image.
4. Convert the image into binary image using the calculated threshold.

3. Detecting Number plate area

1. Fill small holes including numbers of Number plate so that number plate area will be
large to isolate from figure.
2. Determine width and height of the image.
3. Scan each pixel of line counting number of white pixels in the following system,
If number of white pixels < x; pixels become black
Else; no change
If number of white pixels > y; pixels become black
Else; no change
The value of x and y may be changed according the image intensity and plate area.
4. Use the step no. 3 for both horizontal and vertical direction.
5. Check number of possible areas.
If number of areas > 1
Select suitable area
6. Logically AND with binary image obtained at Convert image into binary
algorithm.
7. Crop the required area.

4. Segmentation
1. Filter the noise level present in the image.
2. Clip the plate area in such a way that only numbers of plate area extracted.
3. Separate each character from the plate.

5. Number identification
1. Create the template file from the stored template images.
2. Resize image obtained from segmentation to the size of template.
3. Compare each character with the templates.
4. Store the best matched character.

6. Save to file in given format

1. Open a text file in write mode.
2. Store the character obtained from the number identification process to text file in given
format.
3. Close The file.