Rapid Recognition
Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) or License plate recognition (LPR) has been around for a number of years.
It's now common place, at least in the UK, to see police and other government enforcement agencies driving around with vehicle mounted cameras or parked at the side of the road with portable scanners. Less obvious but still present are the traffic signal mounted devices.
A key factor in these and indeed the majority of ANPR systems to date is the need for complex hardware and configuration such as infra-red illumination, infra-red filtering and fast shutter speed control. This provides a more consistent image exposure regardless of day, night, external light sources such as car headlights or vehicle speed. Without this configuration the analysis software has a much harder job to first find the license plate and then identify the number within.
Mega-pixel IP Cameras
However if we take a look at some of the newer Mega-pixel IP
cameras appearing on the market from manufacturers such as Arecont
(www.arecontvision.com) and Mobotix (www.mobotix.com) both
providing detailed shutter speed configuration combined with
options for dual day / night cameras, we find image sensor
configuration approaching that of specialist ANPR hardware in a
mainstream security camera. Combining this with the introduction of
a probability factor in the ANPR algorithm such as First Evidence
Ltd have achieved in their all new platform independent software
opens up a number of applications previously closed to license
plate recognition.
The concept here is that a partially read number plate with a percentage confidence level is better than no number plate information at all, and in some cases with limited sets of watch data is actually just as good as a 100% read. Combine this with some intelligent and high speed database searches and you have a system that can predict if a number plate is on a plate hit list or not with an accuracy of 95% or more. In simpler terms if you know what you're looking for - or indeed what you're not looking for - then this new approach brings ANPR to projects which previously never had the budget to afford traditional systems.
Codestuff has partnered with First Evidence and is speedily integrating their libraries with our manufacturer independent SDK and customers' security suites to bring ANPR to any application that can benefit from the cost savings of combining the First Evidence system with IP cameras also used for general security.
Applications
An obvious application is the new pay-by-mobile car parking
schemes now common place in most city centres. With the addition of
an IP security system including ANPR, a registered customer could
potentially receive an entry SMS text message and have paid for the
parking before they even finish parking the car - no more searching
for the pay station and having to text the location code.
Registration could also be made easier by offering the caller a
list of recently detected and unregistered plates saving having to
repeatedly press the keypad. And all provided for around the same
cost as a standard CCTV system.
Other applications include residential driveway and business premises protection - alerting owners to unknown vehicles on the property at the same time as recording their manoeuvres. Car dealers could use a watch list feature to monitor stock leaving the forecourt or even to welcome existing customers back with electronic signage. The list goes on, and as the costs reduce, it starts to expand in to previously unthought-of applications.
The Future
As IP continues to enable access to more and more advanced
features within security hardware, and as software developers
continue to hone algorithms, we are going to see ANPR and other
analytical features become the norm throughout the industry. Soon
ANPR will be as common place within specifications as Motion
Detection has become.
Codestuff plans to be there breaking new ground and partnering with the best. The first step is to release our new Rapid Recognition server, designed to harness the power of our partners' analytical expertise and deliver analysis functionality to all IP video streams supported by the now common place Rapid CCTV platform. If you'd like to get involved at the early stages of the First Evidence partnership or have a need for custom software development please get in touch.