Technology never ceases to amaze us. Things change and develop faster than you can blink. This is even true when it comes to number plates. In fact, over the last two decades automatic number plate recognition has seen huge growth and huge changes. Not the best news for those who don’t want to get a ticket, but perhaps better news for those who give them out.
But what is automatic number plate recognition and how does it actually work?
More than just a camera
One of the biggest misconceptions about automatic number plate recognition is that it is simply a normal camera that can pick up number plates. However, this isn’t actually the case. Yes, they are cameras, but these cameras com with specially designed and modified to use infrared light technology.
It is this tech which allows the camera to pick up a clear image of the number plate, avoiding glare and other issues that could happen with normal cameras. As the specialist camera looks at the number plate, there is also a normal camera that will take a picture of the car, this will then form the data which will be used in the next step of the process.
What does automatic number plate recognition do?
Once the number plate picture has been taken, then this image, along with the image of the car and any other data, will be transmitted to a processor. This processor could be in the camera or it could be elsewhere.
The optical character recognition will examine the infrared image and using the machine learning tech within it, the number plate can be separated from the rest of the picture, which will in essence “read” the number plate, creating a string of letters and numbers.
The text string, as it is known, is then sent to a database which contains information and highlighted issues that are linked to the number plate. If there are no matches, then there are going to be no issues, however, if there is a match then the information will be sent to the relevant people.
What is the next stage?
Whilst a lot of the time automatic number plate recognition technology has been used to ensure that you have paid for your parking, there is actually so much more that I can do for you. With a network of cameras throughout the UK, there are so many possibilities for what it can do. The cameras could be used to track criminals as well as stolen vehicles.
Another use for the technology is to collect relevant data on the roads that are being used, who is using them and just how busy they are.
Of course, this technology is going to grow and grow and we are interested to see where automatic number plate recognition ends up in the future.