Incorporating negentropy in saliency-based search free car number plate localization

License plate localization algorithms aim to detect license plates within the scene. In this paper, a new algorithm is discussed where the necessary conditions are imposed into the saliency detection equations. Measures of distance between probability distributions such as negentropy finds the candidate license plates in the image and the Bayesian methodology exploits the a priori information to estimate the highest probability for each candidate. The proposed algorithm has been tested for three datasets, consisting of gray-scale and color images. A detection accuracy of 96% and an average execution time of 80 ms for the first dataset are the marked outcomes. The proposed method outperforms most of the state-of-the-art techniques and it is suitable to use in real-time ALPR applications

Computational intelligence approaches to robotics, automation, and control [Volume guest editors]

No abstract available

An approach to license plate recognition in real time using multi-stage computational intelligence classifier

Automatic car license plate recognition (LPR) is widely used nowadays. It involves plate localization in the image, character segmentation and optical character recognition. In this paper, a set of descriptors of image segments (characters) was proposed as well as a technique of multi-stage classification of letters and digits using cascade of neural network and several parallel Random Forest or classification tree or rule list classifiers. The proposed solution was applied to automated recognition of number plates which are composed of capital Latin letters and Arabic numerals. The paper presents an analysis of the accuracy of the obtained classifiers. The time needed to build the classifier and the time needed to classify characters using it are also presented

Structural Health Monitoring of Large Structures Using Acoustic Emission-Case Histories

Acoustic emission (AE) techniques have successfully been used for assuring the structural integrity of large rocket motorcases since 1963 [...

EDGE DETECTION PARAMETER OPTIMIZATION BASED ON THE GENETIC ALGORITHM FOR RAIL TRACK DETECTION

One of the most important parameters in an edge detection process is setting up the proper threshold value. However, that parameter can be different for almost each image, especially for infrared (IR) images. Traditional edge detectors cannot set it adaptively, so they are not very robust. This paper presents optimization of the edge detection parameter, i.e. threshold values for the Canny edge detector, based on the genetic algorithm for rail track detection with respect to minimal value of detection error. First, determination of the optimal high threshold value is performed, and the low threshold value is calculated based on the well-known method. However, detection results were not satisfactory so that, further on, the determination of optimal low and high threshold values is done. Efficiency of the developed method is tested on set of IR images, captured under night-time conditions. The results showed that quality detection is better and the detection error is smaller in the case of determination of both threshold values of the Canny edge detector

Color, Scale, and Rotation Independent Multiple License Plates Detection in Videos and Still Images

Most of the existing license plate (LP) detection systems have shown significant development in the processing of the images, with restrictions related to environmental conditions and plate variations. With increased mobility and internationalization, there is a need to develop a universal LP detection system, which can handle multiple LPs of many countries and any vehicle, in an open environment and all weather conditions, having different plate variations. This paper presents a novel LP detection method using different clustering techniques based on geometrical properties of the LP characters and proposed a new character extraction method, for noisy/missed character components of the LP due to the presence of noise between LP characters and LP border. The proposed method detects multiple LPs from an input image or video, having different plate variations, under different environmental and weather conditions because of the geometrical properties of the set of characters in the LP. The proposed method is tested using standard media-lab and Application Oriented License Plate (AOLP) benchmark LP recognition databases and achieved the success rates of 97.3% and 93.7%, respectively. Results clearly indicate that the proposed approach is comparable to the previously published papers, which evaluated their performance on publicly available benchmark LP databases

Advances in Character Recognition

This book presents advances in character recognition, and it consists of 12 chapters that cover wide range of topics on different aspects of character recognition. Hopefully, this book will serve as a reference source for academic research, for professionals working in the character recognition field and for all interested in the subject