Efficient License Plate Recognition System with Smarter Interpretation Through IoT

Vehicles play a vital role in modern-day transportation systems. Number plate provides a standard means of identification for any vehicle. To serve this purpose, automatic license plate recognition system was developed. This consisted of four major steps: preprocessing of obtained image, extraction of license plate region, segmentation, and character recognition. In earlier research, direct application of Sobel edge detection algorithm or applying threshold was used as key steps to extract the license plate region, which do not produce efficient results when captured image is subjected to high intensity of light. The use of morphological operations causes deformity in the characters during segmentation. We propose a novel algorithm to tackle the mentioned issues through a unique edge detection algorithm. It is also a tedious task to create and update the database of required vehicles frequently. This problem is solved by the use of 'Internet of things' where an online database can be created and updated from any module instantly. Also, through IoT, we connect all the cameras in a geographical area to one server to create a 'universal eye' which drastically increases the probability of tracing a vehicle over having manual database attached to each camera for identification purpose.