NAME; Maxwell Omare

REG.NO; COM/B/01-00154/2019
Course; Computer Science

3RD YEAR PROJECT.

Design and Implementation of an Automatic Car Plate Number Recognition System for
Crime Detection.
1.1 Background of the study
Massive integration of information technology into all aspects of modern life caused demand
for processing vehicles as conceptual resources in information systems. Because a standalone
information system without any data has no sense, there was also a need to transform
information about vehicles between the reality and information systems. This can be achieved by
a human agent, or by special intelligent equipment which is able to recognize vehicles by their
number plates in a real environment and reflect it into conceptual resources. Because of this,
various recognition techniques have been developed and car plate recognition systems are today
used in various traffic and security applications, such as parking, access and border control, or
tracking of stolen cars.
A vehicle registration plate is a metal of plastic plate attached to a motor vehicle for official
identification purposes. The registration identifier is a numeric or alphanumeric code that
uniquely identifies the vehicle within the issuing region’s database. In some countries, the
identifier is unique within the entire country, while in others it is unique within a state or
province. Whether the identifier is associated with a vehicle or a person also varies by issuing
agency. Depending on the country, the vehicle registration plate may be called a license plate,
tag, car plate or number plate. Most governments require a registration plate to be attached to
both the front and rear of a vehicle, although certain jurisdictions or vehicle types, such as
motorboats require only one plate, which is usually attached to the rear of the vehicle. National
databases relate this number to other information describing the vehicle; such as the make,
model, color, year of manufacture, engine size, type of fuel used, Vehicle Identification (Chassis)
Number and the name and address of the vehicle’s registered owner or keeper.
The term access control refers to the practice of restricting entrance to a property, a building,
or a room to authorized persons. Physical access control can be achieved by a human (a guard,
bouncer, or receptionist) through mechanical means such as locks and keys, or through
technological means such as access control systems.
Automatic car plate recognition (ACPR) is a mass surveillance method that uses optical
character recognition on images to read vehicle registration plates. They can use existing closed-
circuit television or road-rule enforcement cameras or ones specifically designed for the task.
They are used by various police forces and as a method of electronic toll collection on pay-per-
use roads and cataloging the movements of traffic or individuals.
 ACPR can be used to store the images captured by the cameras as well as the text from the
license plate, with some configurable to store a photograph of the driver. Systems commonly use
infrared lighting to allow the camera to take the picture at any time of the day. ACPR technology
tends to be region-specific, owing to plate variation from place to place.
The software aspect of the system runs on standard home computer hardware and can be
linked to other applications or databases. It first uses a series of image manipulation techniques
to detect, normalize and enhance the image of the car plate, and then optical character
recognition (OCR) to extract the alphanumeric of the license plate. ACPR systems are generally
deployed in one of two basic approaches: one allows for the entire process to be performed at the
lane location in real-time, and the other transmits all the images from many lanes to a remote
computer location and performs the OCR process there at some later point in time. When done at
the lane site, the information captured of the plate alphanumeric, date-time, lane identification,
and any other information required is completed in approximately 250 milliseconds. This
information can easily be transmitted to a remote computer for further processing if necessary, or
stored at the lane for later retrieval. In the other arrangement, there are typically large numbers of
PCs used in a server farm to handle high workloads. Often in such systems, there is a
requirement to forward images to the remote server, and this can require larger bandwidth
transmission media.
During the 1990s, significant advances in technology took automatic car plate recognition
systems from limited expensive, hard to set up, fixed based applications to simple “point and
shoot” mobile ones. This was made possible by the creation of software that ran on cheaper PC
based, non-specialist hardware that didn’t require the pre-defined angles, direction, size and
speed in which the plates would be passing the cameras field of view.

1.2 Statement of Problem

Over the years, vehicles have been used to perpetrate crimes such as robbery and kidnapping.
Auto theft has also been a major issue to the nation. This Automatic Car Plate Number
Recognition system will be of great help to the Law enforcement agencies.
Law enforcement agencies are increasingly adopting automated car plate recognition
(ACPR). ACPR systems function to automatically capture an image of the vehicle’s license
plate, transform that image into alphanumeric characters using optical character recognition or
similar software, compare the plate number acquired to one or more databases of vehicles of
interest to law enforcement and other agencies, and to alert the officer when a vehicle of interest
has been observed. The automated capture, analysis, and comparison of vehicle license plates
typically occur within seconds, alerting the officer almost immediately when a wanted plate is
observed.
Although the ACPR term includes a specific reference to “automated,” it should be noted
that human intervention is needed insofar as the officer monitoring the equipment must
independently validate that the ACPR system has accurately “read” the license plate, that the
plate observed is issued from the same state as the one in which it is wanted, and to verify the
currency of the alert, i.e., verifying that the reason this vehicle or the owner was wanted or of
interest is still valid. Technologies to enhance their enforcement and investigative capabilities,
expand their collection of relevant data, and expedite the tedious and time consuming process of
manually comparing vehicle license plates with lists of stolen, wanted, and other vehicles of
interest has to be developed. Police officers, sheriff deputies, and other law enforcement
practitioners are often on the lookout for vehicles that have been reported stolen, are wanted in
connection with a crime or traffic violation, are suspected of being involved in criminal or
terrorist activities, are parking violation scofflaws, have failed to maintain current registration or
to comply with statutory insurance requirements, or any of a number of other legitimate reasons.

1.3 Aim and Objectives of the project

The aim of this project is to develop an application that will provide access control through
automated car plate recognition.
The objectives of the project are as follows;

1. To assist law enforcement agencies in tracking stolen vehicles.

2. To design a database that will serve as a repository for car plate numbers already
registered.
3. To design a responsive system for crime detection.
4. To ensure quick collection of data about vehicles within the scope of study.

1.4 Development environment

The proposed system will be of great advantage to Rivers state law enforcement agency, Rivers
State Internal Revenue Service and other relevant authorities in the following ways;
1. ACPR can assist the police to identify persons of interest associated with criminal
activity. According to a recent article, auto theft is associated with a wide range of
criminal activities, including the offences of break and enter, armed robbery, and drug-
related offences. In other words, offenders steal cars for use in the commission of
additional offences. For example, drug offenders may steal from within cars, but may
also steal the car to raise money to purchase drugs.
2. Improved Performance and Efficiency: There is no comparison between the number of
plates an officer on patrol entering license plate information manually into an onboard
computer and the number that automated ACPR technology can handle. With the
potential ability to read up to 3,000 plates an hour, this technology can improve
productivity. Not only does the system read plates rapidly, but hits are collected only on
vehicles displaying license plates that match the desired criteria and appear in the
database.
 3. Increased Crime Detection: The substantially larger number of vehicles pulled over as a
result of ACPR technology in patrol cars means that officers will come face to face with
more criminals, generating more arrests. Officers attached to ACPR teams make 10 times
more arrests than non-ACPR members. Arrests that are the result of ACPR stops are
primarily for vehicle crimes, robbery, theft, burglary, and drug offenses. It is well known
that car thieves steal cars not just to go for a drive but to help them commit other crimes
such as breaking and entering, robbery, home invasion, and drug trafficking. In this way,
ACPR technology can be valuable in preventing or solving many types of crime plaguing
society.

Every project is carried out to achieve a set of goals with some conditions keeping in mind that it
should be easy to use, feasible and user friendly. As the goal of this project is to develop an
application that will provide access control through automated car plate recognition, this system
will be designed keeping in mind the conditions (easy to use, feasibility and user friendly) stated
above. The proposed project’s intended users are; Rivers State Law enforcement agencies,
Rivers State Internal Revenue Service and other relevant agencies.