VEHICLE NUMBER RECOGNITION SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATIC
TOLL TAX COLLECTION
Shoaib Rehman Soomro Mohammad Arslan Javed
TE-08, Electrical (Telecommunication) Engineering Department, Sukkur IBA
Abstract Vehicle Number Recognition (VNR) is an image
processing technology which uses efficient algorithms to detect
the vehicle number from real time images. The objective is to
design an efficient Vehicle Number Recognition System & to
implement it for automatic toll tax collection. The system detects
the vehicle first and then captures the image of the front view of
the vehicle. Vehicle number plate is localized & characters are
segmented. The system is designed for grayscale images so it
detects the number plate regardless of its color. Template
matching technique is used for character recognition. The
resulting vehicle number is then compared with the available
database of all the vehicles so as to come up with information
about the vehicle type & to charge toll tax accordingly. The
system is then allowed to open road barrier for the vehicle &
generate toll tax receipt. The vehicle information (such as passing
time, date, toll amount) is also stored in the database to maintain
the record. The hardware & software integrated system is
implemented & a working prototype model is developed.
Experiments show that system successfully detects and recognize
the vehicle number plate of real images of Pakistani vehicles.
Keywords: Vehicle Number Recognition; Automatic Toll Tax
Collection; AVNR; VNI; ANPR
.
I. INTRODUCTION
Vehicle Number Recognition (VNR) also known as Automatic
Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) was invented in 1976.
Many scientist groups took interest in VNR after 1990s with
the development of digital camera and the increase in
processing speed. VNR is an image processing technology
which enables to extract vehicle license number form digital
images. It consists of a still or video camera which takes the
image of vehicle, find the location of the number in the image
and then segments the characters & by using the template
matching scheme, it translates the license number of pixel
value into numerical or string. VNR can be used in many areas
from speed enforcement and motorways to automation of
parking lots, etc [1].It can also be used on highways &
motorways to automate the toll tax collections. The system
proposed through this work is efficient for automatic toll tax
collection using Vehicle Number Recognition System. The
earlier methods use plate color information which can detect
only single color number plates or use specific color search
algorithm which is computationally expensive or use artificial
neural network which involves complex mathematics
[2][3][4]. The proposed VNR system is efficient & color
independent so that it can run real time using normal desktop
PC and can recognize various standard number plates such as
Sindh (Yellow), Punjab (Green & white), Government (Green)
& Islamabad (white) under acceptable lighting conditions. The
978-1-4673-4886-7/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE
Fahad Ahmed Memon
proposed system consists of five steps. (1) Detection of the
vehicle & capturing the image of front view of vehicle. (2)
Extract & localizing number plate area using vertical edging.
(3) Number plate segmentation & character separation. (4)
Template matching using correlation to convert characters of
pixel value to alphanumeric value. (5) Using detected license
number to charge toll tax accordingly, storing details in
database, receipt generating & communicating with hardware
to automate road barriers.
This research work is ordered as follow; section 2 reviews the
literature of previous research, section 3 presents the proposed
VNR system, Section 4 briefly discusses the hardware &
database part to make an efficient automated toll tax collection
system, Sections 5 and 6 describe experimental results,
conclusion and future work respectively.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
Typical VNR System consists of four modules: image
acquisition, license plate extraction, character segmentation,
and character recognition. The efficiency & accuracy of the
system largely depends on the second module & various
approaches have been used for this purpose.
There are several common searching algorithms to locate
vehicle license plate. Searching algorithm rely on color
information [2]. In this method a color search algorithm is
used to extract the likelihood ROI in an image [2]. These
algorithms are usually fast but can detect only single colored
standardized number plate. High license plate extraction rate is
achieved in [5], [6] based on vertical edging and mathematical
morphology operations; because of having vertical edges in
English characters & digits, they can be easily classified.
Several algorithms also utilize neural networks for license
plate extraction [4].
There are also some algorithms designed for recognizing the
number plates of Pakistani vehicles [2][5]. The system [2]
utilizes color searching algorithms and effectively detects the
number plates of Sindh only. The other systems [5] rely on the
width to height ratio of the standard number plate & matches
input vertical edges with that ratio for extracting number
plates.
Presently, there are several common algorithms for the
segmentation of license plate characters, such as segmentation
through dilation, template matching & projection analysis. In
the segmentation through dilation, characters of number plate
are dilated vertically for separating each character & smearing
algorithm is used for finding character region [7], the license
plate characters are also segmented by drawing vertical
125
projection of number plate & finding thee region of each work only vertical mask of Sobel iss used. If the image is not
character [8]. This algorithm is simple andd rapid, but can very much skewed, vertical edge detection provides good
create problem if the plate have dots or imagee is noisy. results [5]. The result of edge detection is depicted in figure 4.

III. PROPOSED VNR SYSTEM

M
Proposed VNR system has four main moduules as shown in
Figure 1. In the first module, it gets inpuut image through
average digital camera. In second module,, license plate is
localized using vertical edging technique. In the third module,
characters of extracted plate are separatedd using character
segmentation. Finally characters & numberrs are indentified
using template matching. Each module contains several
Figure 3. Grayscale Image Figurre 4. Image with vertical edges
processing steps, a flow chart for the propoosed algorithm is
shown in Figure 2.
C. Histogram Analysis of Bit Den nsity
In this step, bit density of rows in figure-4
f is examined using
Image histogram analysis. For this purp pose, number of ones is
Acquisition calculated for each row & presented through vertical
projection. Vertical projection is a graph with two axes.
Vertical axis shows the rows of the image, and horizontal axis
depicts the number of white pixels in each row. Figure 5
shows the vertical projection of the edged
e image.
Number Plate
Extraction

Character
Segmentation

Figure 5.Vertical Projection of bit density

Figure-5 shows that the number platte has the highest values in
Template the vertical projection. Therefore, the
t next step is to find the
Matching rows with the a% highest values in the projection. These rows
are the candidate regions for the plate. Next steps will be
m this step. Figure 6 shows
applied on the results obtained from
Figure 1. Modules of VNR System Figure 2. Proposed Algorithm Flow the resulted image.

A. Image Acquisition
First of all, an image is captured from the front of vehicle
m, for simulation
using a digital camera. In the present system
results, images are taken using a Nokia phonne (5130) having
resolution 300x400 pixels & for the prototypee model, webcam
is used. The captured image is then acquired in Matlab & then
converted into grayscale. Figure 3 shows thee image captured
& converted in grayscale.
B. Vertical Edging
This step explores the property of Englissh Characters &
Figure 6. Result of Bit Density
D Analysis
Digits, because of the digits & characters, image will have
sharp edges in the number plate area [6]. TThis property has
been used for extracting & locating num mber plate within
D. Row Deviation
image. Several methods have been proposed for edge
detection. But research work shows that Sobeel mask has good Headlights & background of the vehicle
v (such as trees) can
performance compared with others [6]. The SSobel method has have vertical edges as well; thereforre they can also be selected
two masks: horizontal mask and vertical m mask. In present as candidate regions in the previou us step. Row deviation is

978-1-4673-4886-7/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE 126

found to prevent this. In Pakistan, number pplates are usually
located in middle or offset on the vehicless bumper. Also a
Number plate has vertical edges in a narrow w range, but those
background & headlights have vertical edges in an wide range.
This feature is used in row deviation [6]. B By calculating the
deviation quantity in each row of the verticaal edges, it can be
easily classified. An easy method for doing tthis is to find the
number of deviations between ones and zeros for each
row within it 80% middle columns of figure--6. If the row has
b% minimum deviation means this row bellongs to plate, so
other rows from candidate regions will bbe removed [6].
Number plate has vertical edges very close, therefore rows in
the plate region will have consequent points which are totally
ones or zeros and have minimum devviation. Figure 7
depicts the vertical projection of row deviatio n.
Figure 7. Row Deviation Analysiis
As already shown & discussed, structure of thhe vehicles is also
considered as candidate region. This is ddue to boundary
structure & background of the vehicle. The fiigure 8 shows the
result obtained after considering deviation anaalysis.
Figure 8. Result of Row Deviatioon
E. Dilation
In this step, morphological operator is useed. The resulting
image of vertical edges is dilated horizontallly in first attempt
and dilated vertically in second attempt. The structuring
elements of dilations are 6-pixel horizontal or vertical lines.
The image is dilated to connect characters of plate & making
skeleton of the number plate. Result of dilaation is shown in
figure 9.
978-1-4673-4886-7/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE
Figure 9. Dilated Image
F. Removing Small Objects & Meedian Filtering
Along with Number plate there caan have small lines in the
candidate region. In this step those small
s regions are removed.
All those regions which have pixels less then P-pixels are
removed. In this way there will bee only single object in the
image which is the location of numb ber plate. In the next step, a
1x15 median filter is applied on th he image to make smooth
skeleton of the number plate. The reesult image after removing
small objects & median filtering is shown
s in figure-9.
Figure 10. After Filtering
G. Number Plate Extraction
The image in figure 10 is multiplied with original image of
figure 3 & then by applying horizzontal & vertical scanning
number plate is cropped & extracted
d.
H. Plate Segmentation
In this step, the characters & digits of the plate are segmented
and each is saved as different imaage. To do this 1st of all
number plate is resized to a speccific size & image region
properties are found and details of o each connected object
(character) within extracted image are
a determined. By finding
out the properties, start & ending coordinates of each character
are found & each character is saved as different image in a cell
of matrices. Figure 12 shows the nu umber plate characters after
segmentation.
Figure 11. Extracted Number Plate Fig
gure 12. Segmented Number Plate
127
 I. Template Matching
The last step of vehicle number recognition is the template
matching. For matching the characters with stored characters,
input images must be equal sized with the stored characters. In
the present work 50x30 pixel characters are used. When the
extracted characters from plate and stored characters are both
equal sized & each input character image is compared with the
ones already stored using cross correlation and the best
similarity is measured. In the Pakistani license plates, all 36
alphanumeric characters (26 alphabets and 10 numerals) are
used, therefore this system is used and each input character is
correlated with all 36 alphanumeric characters.
In the template matching each input character of the plate is
correlated with all templates, then from the templates that
character is selected which has highest value of correlation
coefficient with input character.
IV. INTERFACING WITH HARDWARE MODEL
The VNR system is interfaced with hardware model &
database to make an automated toll tax collection system. The
hardware model consists of proximity sensor to detect the
presence of vehicle, a web camera to capture the image,
motors to open/close the road barriers of toll plaza, desktop
computer on which VNR algorithm is executed, LCD & seven
segments display & a microcontroller for controlling all the
components of hardware model. As the vehicle arrives at toll
plaza, the inductive proximity sensor detects the vehicle and
gives a signal to the PC using parallel port. The camera
connected to the PC captures the image of front view of the
vehicle & applies VNR algorithm on the image to recognize
the vehicles license number. This number is then used to
charge toll tax & generate receipt containing all the
information of vehicle. Also, all the information such as time,
date, plate number & toll amount is stored in database to
maintain the record. PC then sends the signal to
microcontroller using parallel port & the road barrier is
opened for a time by driving motors & Please Move Ahead
is displayed on the LCD to guide the vehicles. Complete
hardware design of the system is shown in figure 13.
D Matlab Executing VNR Algorithm
A [4]
T Smart License Plate Recognition System Based on Image Processing
A Microcontroller
Camera Receipt Printer
B Applications, pp 123 127, 2003.
A
Proximity Sensor
S Algorithm for Pakistani License Plates, Canadian Journal on Image
E Road LCD & 7-
Barriers Segment
Figure 13. System Hardware Design
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Better performance of the system can be achieved when
percentage values for a, b & P are set according to the quality
of camera & resolution of images. After the system has been
978-1-4673-4886-7/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE
developed, the whole system is setup for testing. The proposed
algorithm has been designed in Matlab R2007 for recognition
of vehicles number plates. The system had utilized Compaq
Evo N610c with 2.00 GHz processor & 512 MB RAM. The
usefulness of the proposed algorithm has been tested over
images captured in various lighting conditions with a 2
megapixel camera of mobile phone (Nokia 5130). The image
resolution is used as 400x300 pixels for real scenes & for
prototype model a web camera is used to capture real time
images with resolution of 640x480 pixels. The system takes an
average of 3 to 4 seconds from detection of the vehicle to
opening road barrier.
VI. CONCLUSIONS & FUTURE WORKS
In this paper, we proposed a real time and efficient
method for Vehicle Number recognition & implementation of
that method for automatic toll tax collection. The system has
been tested on many images of various lighting conditions &
system can be implemented on motorways & highways for
automatic toll tax collection.
The proposed system works quite well however, there are
still areas for improvement. The camera used in this project is
average quality & cannot detect fast changing targets due to
the long shutter time. The system robustness and speed can be
increased if high resolution camera is used. The template
matching method used in this project for the recognition is
subject to problems when detecting the characters such as 8 &
B or 0 & O. The frequency transformation can be used while
correlating to improve the number recognition of the system.
.
REFERENCES
[1] The Automatic Number Plate Recognition Tutorial, http://www.anpr-
tutorial.com, Accessed on May-2012.
[2] M. Tahir Qadri, M. Asif Automatic Number Plate Recognition System
for Vehicle Identification using OCR, International Conference on
Education Technology and Computer, pp 335 338, 2009.
[3] V. Swetha, D.R. Sandeep Automatic Authorized Vehicle Recognition
System, Chennai and Dr.MGR University Second International
Conference on Sustainable Energy and Intelligent System (SEISCON),
pp 789 790, 2011.
V. Koval, V. Turchenko, V. Kochan, A. Sachenko, G. Markowsky
Using Neural Network, IEEE International Workshop on Intelligent
Data Acquisition and Advanced Computing Systems: Technology and
[5] A. Tahir, H. Adnan Habib, M. Fahad Khan License Plate Recognition
Processing and Computer Vision Vol. 1, No. 2, pp 30-36, April 2010.
[6] F. Faradji, A. Hossein Rezaie, M. Ziaratban A Morphological Based
License Plate Locating System, IEEE International Conference on
Image Processing(ICIP), pp 57-60, 2007.
[7] S. Ozbay, and E. Ercelebi Automatic Vehicle Identification by Plate
Recognition World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology
9, pp 222-225, 2005.
128
[8] Ch. Lakshmi, A.J Rani, K.S Ramakrishna M.Kanti Kiran A Novel
Approach for Indian License Plate Recognition System, International
Journal of Advanced Engineering Science and Technologies (IJAEST)
Vol No. 6, Issue No. 1, pp 10-14, 2010.

978-1-4673-4886-7/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE 129