Description

An algorithm for license plate recognition (LPR) applied to the intelligent transportation system is proposed on the basis of a novel shadow removal technique and character recognition algorithms. This paper has two major contributions. ◦ One contribution is a new binary method, i.e., the shadow removal method, which is based on the improved Bernsen algorithm combined with the Gaussian filter. ◦ Our second contribution is a character recognition algorithm known as support vector machine (SVM) integration. In SVM integration, character features are extracted from the elastic mesh, and the entire address character string is taken as the object of study, as opposed to a single character. This paper also presents improved techniques for image tilt correction and image gray enhancement. Our algorithm is robust to the variance of illumination, view angle, position, size, and color of the license plates when working in a complex environment.