Automatic Number Plate Recognition (or as frequently called ‘number plate recognition’) is a special form of optical character recognition (OCR).

License plate recognition (LPR) is a type of technology, mainly software, that enables computer systems to read automatically the registration number (license number) of vehicles from digital pictures.

Reading automatically the registration number means transforming the pixels of the digital image into the ASCII text of the number plate.

While license plate recognition has special type of OCR technology, today optical character recognition (OCR) technology is considered strictly a type of technology – mainly software – that lets you scan paper documents and turn them into electronic, editable files.

From the LPR/ANPR point of view the image quality is always key factor. Capturing of fast moving vehicles needs special technique to avoid motion blur which can decrease the recognition accuracy dramatically. To ensure the right image quality short shutter time need to be used with the combination of high-power illumination.

The best illumination is the IR, because the retro-reflective plates reflect this kind of light very well and it is undetectable for the human eye. This combination works fine during day and night and provides constant good image quality.

Only dedicated ANPR cameras meet these requirements, like AHR’s ANPR cameras, which provide flexible shutter control with built-in IR flash and able to catch the vehicles up to 250km/h which is suitable for all kind of license plate reading applications.

What Can KKC Offer To You?

We design and develop high quality recognition software for the automatic recognition of vehicle license plates. We market our CARMENŽ number plate recognition software as a number plate recognition engine along with a software development kit (SDK). We offer it to you in this integratable form in order to let you incorporate ANPR technology into your computer system. Your computer system equipped with our CARMENŽ Automatic Number Plate Recognition Software Engine becomes capable of reading the registration number of any vehicle from around the World with the highest accuracy under a fraction of a second.

Beside the development of the core license plate recognition technology, we design, manufacture and market supplemental hardware devices specially engineered for the image capturing task of number plate recognition. With our FXCAM IBW ANPR Cameras and our FXVD4 Industrial Frame Grabber Cards your system will be plug-and-play-equipped with an ultimate high quality image capturing technology for 24hour/day, 7days/week operation.

Why Would You Choose KKC?

We offer you the ultimate license plate recognition technology of the highest quality on a competitive price. By choosing us you choose to benefit from our expertise of a decade-long experience collected from thousands of installations in over 60 countries worldwide. By choosing us you choose a reliable, responsible partner who values long term, mutually beneficial partnerships. We are committed to innovation, technology and quality… And our partners are satisfied.

Terminology

While License Plate Recognition, abbreviated as LPR, and Automatic Number Plate Recognition, abbreviated as ANPR are the most commonly understood terms, there are several other living expressions for ANPR, such as: license plate reading, number plate recognition, car plate recognition, car license recognition, car plate reading, registration number recognition, automatic plate identification, automatic plate reading, optical plate recognition, vehicle plate recognition, car plate OCR, automatic license recognition, automatic licence plate recognition, car number OCR, etc…

Introduction

It is believed that there are currently more than half a billion cars on the roads worldwide. All those vehicles have their vehicle identification number (“VIN”) as their primary identifier. The vehicle identification number is actually a license number which states a legal license to participate in the public traffic.

All vehicle world-wide should have its license number – written on a license plate – mounted onto its body (at least at the back side) and no vehicle without properly mounted, well visible and well readable license plate should run on the roads.

To process, sort or analyse data everyone thinks about using computers. If the data is already in the computer most of these tasks are rather easy to be carried out. It is needless to say that the license number is the most important identification data a computer system should treat when dealing with vehicles.

Suppose a company’s security manager would like to have a system that precisely tells at every moment where the cars of the company are: in the garage or out on roads. By registering every single drive-out from and drive-in to the garage, the system could always tell which car is out and which is in. The key issue of this task is that the registration of the movement of the vehicles should be doneautomatically by the system, otherwise it would require manpower.

Automatic License Plate Recognition does not mean less nor more than the above mentionedautomation of data input. Automatic License Plate Recognition replaces, redeems the task of manually typing the plate number of the bypassing vehicle into the computer system.

When talking about License Plate Recognition System people usually understand a computer system that utilises automatic license plate recognition for data input automation.

Strictly speaking License Plate Recognition System is an integrated hardware + software device that reads the vehicles license plate and outputs the license plate number in ASCII – to some data processing system. Again, License Plate Recognition means Automated Data Input whereData equals the registration number of the vehicle.