Automated Number Plate recognition ANPR

[Harshu]

Hey I have to do a project in which I need to design the ANPR system, i plan on working on C++, what i need to do is that the my software will take the photo of a vehicle as an input and will give its number plate as its out put and then will recognise the characters on it, I would like to know how should i start , can anyone plz tell me how to input a photo and edit it in C++ and plz suggest a book or some link which can help me .

Thank You

[Cubbi]

My previous company did that, we hired a PhD in mathematics whose thesis was in 2D pattern recognition to do that part. The competition among plate recognition systems is fierce right now, and there's strong demand, at least here in the US. Nobody got the perfect solution yet.

Anyway, your core algorithm will be a kind of OCR, but plates make it hard by using a multitude of fonts and layouts, by occasional dirt and odd angles, different lighting and weather conditions. Note that different states may issue plates with identical text, so to make this useful, you have to also recognize the state (from layout, font, color, etc - that's pure pattern recognition). I am sure there are books on that.

As for inputting a photo, there are many libraries available. I like boost, personally, but one of the specialized C libraries like libtiff may be easier to find help with.