ALPR
Step up
to the
Stunted

plate

growth
JIM KENNEDY on what makes the difference between a good
license plate reading system... and a great one
The single big
Thinking Highw
gest contributor to the acce
ays’ financial anal
ptance of The present
yst MARGARET
Automatic License Plate Readers as a tool for viola- Over the past several years the expectations have been
tion processing on a tolled road is the transponder
PETTIT looks at the European
.
T
re
e
ve
r
rsed.
ritor
No long
ial
er do the toll road operators concern
The tr
Cooperation Pro
ansponder paved the way f
gramme and f
or gateless high- themselv
inds that lik
es with the quality of a license plate imag
e with
e.
speed toll r
any other major pro
oads and gave a great boost to the technol- Whether it’s a moonless night or the sun is directly on
ogy that may likely replace it via true video tolling
gramme
. Open
, it’
the plate
s a matter of
, they know the image is going to be good. Now
road tolling crpriorieated an opporties tunity for that embarrass- the concern has shifted to the cost of all those reviewers
ingly high number of those among us who would know- necessary for the transcription of the data from those
ingly drive through a lane without a gate, in a vehicle images. Today the focus is on the systems ability to
without a transponder. extract the license plate number data with a high degree
License plate readers were in their infancy when vehi- of accuracy for as many vehicles as is possible and
cle transponders were introduced for toll road use and thereby minimizing the need for human review.
those early ALPR systems initially relied on CCTV sur- The question is rarely “how does your system work in
veillance cameras to provide an image for the OCR the bright sun, or during the middle of the night?” any-
process. The need for more consistent and better qual- more, but more likely “how accurate is your ALPR, at
ity images was soon apparent if ALPR suppliers wanted what vehicle speeds, and how many vehicles can you
to get seriously involved in the toll road
“Does an ALPR
handle per hour?”
business. Cameras designed to be It is no longer enough just to be able
excellent security devices simply could supplier competing to find a license plate hidden amongst
not handle the dynamic lighting and
for a system in
the bumper stickers and advertise-
high vehicle speed requirements. ments found on the rear of many vehi-
ALPR suppliers responded with cam- Israel quote the cles. Ever increasing demands for
eras and illuminators which may not
accuracy they have
greater accuracy keep the ALPR tech-
always give a good image of the vehi- nology suppliers busy in their attempts
cle, but always gave a good image of experienced on to satisfy the requirements, often writ-
the license plate.
Interstate 95?”
ten by someone whose expectations are
Having previously relied on those quite high.
less-than-ideal security cameras, the early toll road It appears the push towards video tolling is creating
adopters of ALPR systems were grateful just having ALPR accuracy expectations closer to those claimed by
decent images of license plates for their violation transponders. In spite of statements made by each ALPR
processing. The fact that these systems actually read technology provider claiming to offer the better
the license plate and provided the data automatically on approach, many of the best are capable of about the
a number of violation transactions was looked upon as a same accuracy under most conditions. OCR algorithms
bonus – even a novelty. may vary in their complexity, but most of the same prob-
40 Vol 4 No 1 Thinking Highways www.thinkinghighways.com
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