117-443: Automatic number-plate recognition ( ANPR ; see also other names below) is a technology that uses optical character recognition on images to read vehicle registration plates to create vehicle location data . It can use existing closed-circuit television , road-rule enforcement cameras , or cameras specifically designed for the task. ANPR is used by police forces around the world for law enforcement purposes, including checking if
234-595: A binary search algorithm (with cost O ( log n ) {\displaystyle O(\log n)} ) outperforms a sequential search (cost O ( n ) {\displaystyle O(n)} ) when used for table lookups on sorted lists or arrays. The analysis, and study of algorithms is a discipline of computer science . Algorithms are often studied abstractly, without referencing any specific programming language or implementation. Algorithm analysis resembles other mathematical disciplines as it focuses on
351-464: A dropout color which can be easily removed by the OCR system. Palm OS used a special set of glyphs, known as Graffiti , which are similar to printed English characters but simplified or modified for easier recognition on the platform's computationally limited hardware. Users would need to learn how to write these special glyphs. Zone-based OCR restricts the image to a specific part of a document. This
468-468: A flowchart offers a way to describe and document an algorithm (and a computer program corresponding to it). It has four primary symbols: arrows showing program flow, rectangles (SEQUENCE, GOTO), diamonds (IF-THEN-ELSE), and dots (OR-tie). Sub-structures can "nest" in rectangles, but only if a single exit occurs from the superstructure. It is often important to know how much time, storage, or other cost an algorithm may require. Methods have been developed for
585-745: A function . Starting from an initial state and initial input (perhaps empty ), the instructions describe a computation that, when executed , proceeds through a finite number of well-defined successive states, eventually producing "output" and terminating at a final ending state. The transition from one state to the next is not necessarily deterministic ; some algorithms, known as randomized algorithms , incorporate random input. Around 825 AD, Persian scientist and polymath Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī wrote kitāb al-ḥisāb al-hindī ("Book of Indian computation") and kitab al-jam' wa'l-tafriq al-ḥisāb al-hindī ("Addition and subtraction in Indian arithmetic"). In
702-435: A heuristic is an approach to solving problems that do not have well-defined correct or optimal results. For example, although social media recommender systems are commonly called "algorithms", they actually rely on heuristics as there is no truly "correct" recommendation. As an effective method , an algorithm can be expressed within a finite amount of space and time and in a well-defined formal language for calculating
819-450: A vehicle is registered or licensed . It is also used for electronic toll collection on pay-per-use roads and as a method of cataloguing the movements of traffic, for example by highways agencies. Automatic number-plate recognition 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
936-452: A "Statistical Machine" for searching microfilm archives using an optical code recognition system. In 1931, he was granted US Patent number 1,838,389 for the invention. The patent was acquired by IBM . In 1974, Ray Kurzweil started the company Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. and continued development of omni- font OCR, which could recognize text printed in virtually any font. (Kurzweil is often credited with inventing omni-font OCR, but it
1053-448: A barricaded area, the decision may be made to have an acceptable error rate of one character. This is because the likelihood of an unauthorized car having such a similar license plate is seen as quite small. However, this level of inaccuracy would not be acceptable in most applications of an ANPR system. At the front end of any ANPR system is the imaging hardware which captures the image of the license plates. The initial image capture forms
1170-439: A character error rate of 1% (99% accuracy) may result in an error rate of 5% or worse if the measurement is based on whether each whole word was recognized with no incorrect letters. Using a large enough dataset is important in a neural-network-based handwriting recognition solutions. On the other hand, producing natural datasets is very complicated and time-consuming. An example of the difficulties inherent in digitizing old text
1287-449: A clearer image of the plates. During the 1990s, significant advances in technology took automatic number-plate recognition (ANPR) 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 also no longer needed to be given the pre-defined angles, direction, size and speed in which
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#17327804077311404-422: A code of practice in 2013 for the use of surveillance cameras, including ANPR, by government and law enforcement agencies. The aim of the code is to help ensure their use is "characterised as surveillance by consent, and such consent on the part of the community must be informed consent and not assumed by a system operator. Surveillance by consent should be regarded as analogous to policing by consent ." In addition,
1521-680: A computer-executable form, but are also used to define or document algorithms. There are many possible representations and Turing machine programs can be expressed as a sequence of machine tables (see finite-state machine , state-transition table , and control table for more), as flowcharts and drakon-charts (see state diagram for more), as a form of rudimentary machine code or assembly code called "sets of quadruples", and more. Algorithm representations can also be classified into three accepted levels of Turing machine description: high-level description, implementation description, and formal description. A high-level description describes qualities of
1638-719: A computing machine or a human who could only carry out specific elementary operations on symbols . Most algorithms are intended to be implemented as computer programs . However, algorithms are also implemented by other means, such as in a biological neural network (for example, the human brain performing arithmetic or an insect looking for food), in an electrical circuit , or a mechanical device. Step-by-step procedures for solving mathematical problems have been recorded since antiquity. This includes in Babylonian mathematics (around 2500 BC), Egyptian mathematics (around 1550 BC), Indian mathematics (around 800 BC and later),
1755-496: A considerable effect on the volume of drivers travelling at excessive speeds; on the stretch of road mentioned above (A77 Between Glasgow and Ayr) there has been noted a "huge drop" in speeding violations since the introduction of a SPECS system. Optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader ( OCR ) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from
1872-574: A critically important part of the ANPR system which, in accordance to the garbage in, garbage out principle of computing, will often determine the overall performance. License plate capture is typically performed by specialized cameras designed specifically for the task, although new software techniques are being implemented that support any IP-based surveillance camera and increase the utility of ANPR for perimeter security applications. Factors which pose difficulty for license plate imaging cameras include
1989-422: A dedicated camera set to 1 ⁄ 1000 of a second. It is also important that the camera use a global shutter, as opposed to rolling shutter , to assure that the taken images are distortion-free. Because the car is moving, slower shutter speeds could result in an image which is too blurred to read using the OCR software, especially if the camera is much higher up than the vehicle. In slow-moving traffic, or when
2106-682: A direct impact on the resolution and accuracy of a read in these conditions. Installing ANPR cameras on law enforcement vehicles requires careful consideration of the juxtaposition of the cameras to the license plates they are to read. Using the right number of cameras and positioning them accurately for optimal results can prove challenging, given the various missions and environments at hand. Highway patrol requires forward-looking cameras that span multiple lanes and are able to read license plates at high speeds. City patrol needs shorter range, lower focal length cameras for capturing plates on parked cars. Parking lots with perpendicularly parked cars often require
2223-605: A license plate is identified as expired or on the incorrect vehicle. Successfully recognized plates may be matched against databases including "wanted person", "protection order", missing person, gang member, known and suspected terrorist, supervised release, immigration violator, and National Sex Offender lists. In addition to the real-time processing of license plate numbers, ANPR systems in the US collect (and can indefinitely store) data from each license plate capture. Images, dates, times and GPS coordinates can be stockpiled and can help place
2340-469: A list of optical character recognition software, see Comparison of optical character recognition software . OCR accuracy can be increased if the output is constrained by a lexicon – a list of words that are allowed to occur in a document. This might be, for example, all the words in the English language, or a more technical lexicon for a specific field. This technique can be problematic if
2457-559: A noun, for example, allowing greater accuracy. The Levenshtein Distance algorithm has also been used in OCR post-processing to further optimize results from an OCR API. In recent years, the major OCR technology providers began to tweak OCR systems to deal more efficiently with specific types of input. Beyond an application-specific lexicon, better performance may be had by taking into account business rules, standard expression, or rich information contained in color images. This strategy
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#17327804077312574-445: A number of possible difficulties that the software must be able to cope with. These include: While some of these problems can be corrected within the software, it is primarily left to the hardware side of the system to work out solutions to these difficulties. Increasing the height of the camera may avoid problems with objects (such as other vehicles) obscuring the plate but introduces and increases other problems, such as adjusting for
2691-559: A principle of video fixing of the car with recognition of license plates with check under data base. The Home Office states the purpose of automatic number-plate recognition in the United Kingdom is to help detect, deter and disrupt criminality including tackling organised crime groups and terrorists. Vehicle movements are recorded through a network of nearly 13,000 cameras that capture approximately 55 million ANPR 'read' records daily. These records are stored for up to two years in
2808-525: A programmer can write structured programs using only these instructions; on the other hand "it is also possible, and not too hard, to write badly structured programs in a structured language". Tausworthe augments the three Böhm-Jacopini canonical structures : SEQUENCE, IF-THEN-ELSE, and WHILE-DO, with two more: DO-WHILE and CASE. An additional benefit of a structured program is that it lends itself to proofs of correctness using mathematical induction . By themselves, algorithms are not usually patentable. In
2925-399: A ranked list of candidate characters. Software such as Cuneiform and Tesseract use a two-pass approach to character recognition. The second pass is known as adaptive recognition and uses the letter shapes recognized with high confidence on the first pass to better recognize the remaining letters on the second pass. This is advantageous for unusual fonts or low-quality scans where the font
3042-572: A result, on 1 April 2019, a Fairfax County judge issued an injunction prohibiting the Fairfax County Police Department from collecting and storing ALPR data outside of an investigation or intelligence gathering related to a criminal investigation. On October 22, 2020, the Supreme Court of Virginia overturned that decision, ruling that the data collected was not personal, identifying information. In April 2020,
3159-471: A scanned document, a photo of a document, a scene photo (for example the text on signs and billboards in a landscape photo) or from subtitle text superimposed on an image (for example: from a television broadcast). Widely used as a form of data entry from printed paper data records – whether passport documents, invoices, bank statements , computerized receipts, business cards, mail, printed data, or any suitable documentation – it
3276-477: A sequence of operations", which would include all computer programs (including programs that do not perform numeric calculations), and any prescribed bureaucratic procedure or cook-book recipe . In general, a program is an algorithm only if it stops eventually —even though infinite loops may sometimes prove desirable. Boolos, Jeffrey & 1974, 1999 define an algorithm to be an explicit set of instructions for determining an output, that can be followed by
3393-696: A set of standards were introduced in 2014 for data, infrastructure, and data access and management. In the United States, ANPR systems are more commonly referred to as ALPR (Automatic License Plate Reader/Recognition) technology, due to differences in language (i.e., "number plates" are referred to as "license plates" in American English ) Since 2019, private companies like Flock Safety have grown rapidly, promoting stationary ALPR cameras to private individuals as well as neighbourhood associations and law enforcement. By April 2022, 1500 cities across
3510-411: A single character) – are still the subject of active research. The MNIST database is commonly used for testing systems' ability to recognize handwritten digits. Accuracy rates can be measured in several ways, and how they are measured can greatly affect the reported accuracy rate. For example, if word context (a lexicon of words) is not used to correct software finding non-existent words,
3627-443: A specialized camera with a very short focal length. Most technically advanced systems are flexible and can be configured with a number of cameras ranging from one to four which can easily be repositioned as needed. States with rear-only license plates have an additional challenge since a forward-looking camera is ineffective with oncoming traffic. In this case one camera may be turned backwards. There are seven primary algorithms that
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3744-533: A stolen car was made in 1981. However, ANPR did not become widely used until new developments in cheaper and easier to use software were pioneered during the 1990s. The collection of ANPR data for future use ( i.e ., in solving then-unidentified crimes) was documented in the early 2000s. The first documented case of ANPR being used to help solve a murder occurred in November 2005, in Bradford , UK, where ANPR played
3861-405: A suspect at a scene, aid in witness identification, pattern recognition or the tracking of individuals. The Department of Homeland Security has proposed a federal database to combine all monitoring systems, which was cancelled after privacy complaints. In 1998, a Washington, D.C. police lieutenant pleaded guilty to extortion after blackmailing the owners of vehicles parked near a gay bar. In 2015,
3978-483: A system called Matrix Police in cooperation with the police . It consists of a portable computer equipped with a web camera that scans the stolen car database using automatic number-plate recognition. The system is installed on the dashboard of selected patrol vehicles ( PDA -based hand-held versions also exist) and is mainly used to control the license plate of parking cars. As the Auxiliary Police do not have
4095-451: A time. Advanced systems capable of producing a high degree of accuracy for most fonts are now common, and with support for a variety of image file format inputs. Some systems are capable of reproducing formatted output that closely approximates the original page including images, columns, and other non-textual components. Early optical character recognition may be traced to technologies involving telegraphy and creating reading devices for
4212-655: A total of 9.7 millions. According to the Dutch Attorney General, the average number of violation of the speed limits on motorway sections equipped with average speed cameras is between 1 and 2%, compared to 10 to 15% elsewhere. One of the most notable stretches of average speed cameras in the UK is found on the A77 road in Scotland, with 32 miles (51 km) being monitored between Kilmarnock and Girvan . In 2006 it
4329-416: A vital role in locating and subsequently convicting killers of Sharon Beshenivsky . 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 number plate, and then optical character recognition (OCR) to extract the alphanumerics of
4446-479: Is a common method of digitizing printed texts so that they can be electronically edited, searched, stored more compactly, displayed online, and used in machine processes such as cognitive computing , machine translation , (extracted) text-to-speech , key data and text mining . OCR is a field of research in pattern recognition , artificial intelligence and computer vision . Early versions needed to be trained with images of each character, and worked on one font at
4563-472: Is a finite sequence of mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation . Algorithms are used as specifications for performing calculations and data processing . More advanced algorithms can use conditionals to divert the code execution through various routes (referred to as automated decision-making ) and deduce valid inferences (referred to as automated reasoning ). In contrast,
4680-416: Is a method or mathematical process for problem-solving and engineering algorithms. The design of algorithms is part of many solution theories, such as divide-and-conquer or dynamic programming within operation research . Techniques for designing and implementing algorithm designs are also called algorithm design patterns, with examples including the template method pattern and the decorator pattern. One of
4797-559: Is a monitoring system named Tutor (device) [ it ] covering more than 2,500 km (1,600 miles) (2012). The Tutor system is also able to intercept cars while changing lanes. The Tutor or Safety Tutor is a joint project between the motorway management company, Autostrade per l'Italia , and the State Police. Over time it has been replaced by other versions for example the SICVe-PM where PM stands for PlateMatching and by
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4914-526: Is a more specific classification of algorithms; an algorithm for such problems may fall into one or more of the general categories described above as well as into one of the following: One of the simplest algorithms finds the largest number in a list of numbers of random order. Finding the solution requires looking at every number in the list. From this follows a simple algorithm, which can be described in plain English as: High-level description: (Quasi-)formal description: Written in prose but much closer to
5031-934: Is a requirement to forward images to the remote server, and this can require larger bandwidth transmission media. ANPR uses optical character recognition (OCR) on images taken by cameras. When Dutch vehicle registration plates switched to a different style in 2002, one of the changes made was to the font , introducing small gaps in some letters (such as P and R ) to make them more distinct and therefore more legible to such systems. Some license plate arrangements use variations in font sizes and positioning—ANPR systems must be able to cope with such differences to be truly effective. More complicated systems can cope with international variants, though many programs are individually tailored to each country. The cameras used can be existing road-rule enforcement or closed-circuit television cameras, as well as mobile units, which are usually attached to vehicles. Some systems use infrared cameras to take
5148-428: Is accomplished relatively simply by aligning the image to a uniform grid based on where vertical grid lines will least often intersect black areas. For proportional fonts , more sophisticated techniques are needed because whitespace between letters can sometimes be greater than that between words, and vertical lines can intersect more than one character. There are two basic types of core OCR algorithm, which may produce
5265-433: Is becoming a significant component of municipal predictive policing strategies and intelligence gathering, as well as for recovery of stolen vehicles, identification of wanted felons, and revenue collection from individuals who are delinquent on city or state taxes or fines, or monitoring for Amber Alerts . With the widespread implementation of this technology, many U.S. states now issue misdemeanor citations of up to $ 500 when
5382-548: Is called "Application-Oriented OCR" or "Customized OCR", and has been applied to OCR of license plates , invoices , screenshots , ID cards , driver's licenses , and automobile manufacturing . The New York Times has adapted the OCR technology into a proprietary tool they entitle Document Helper , that enables their interactive news team to accelerate the processing of documents that need to be reviewed. They note that it enables them to process what amounts to as many as 5,400 pages per hour in preparation for reporters to review
5499-452: 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, such as those found in the London congestion charge project. Often in such systems, there
5616-536: Is detected. As of 2012, the fine for exceeding the speed limit for more than 30% is about ₺ 315 (US$ 175). The project of system integration «OLLI Technology» and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Department of State Traffic Inspection (STI) experiments on the introduction of a modern technical complex which is capable to locate stolen cars, drivers deprived of driving licenses and other problem cars in real time. The Ukrainian complex "Video control" working by
5733-413: Is distorted (e.g. blurred or faded). As of December 2016 , modern OCR software includes Google Docs OCR, ABBYY FineReader , and Transym. Others like OCRopus and Tesseract use neural networks which are trained to recognize whole lines of text instead of focusing on single characters. A technique known as iterative OCR automatically crops a document into sections based on the page layout. OCR
5850-411: Is generally an offline process, which analyses a static document. There are cloud based services which provide an online OCR API service. Handwriting movement analysis can be used as input to handwriting recognition . Instead of merely using the shapes of glyphs and words, this technique is able to capture motion, such as the order in which segments are drawn, the direction, and the pattern of putting
5967-584: Is often featured in the reality TV show Parking Wars featured on A&E Network . In the show, tow truck drivers and booting teams use the ANPR to find delinquent vehicles with high amounts of unpaid parking fines. Laws vary among the states regarding collection and retention of license plate information. As of 2019, 16 states have limits on how long the data may be retained, with the lowest being New Hampshire (3 minutes) and highest Colorado (3 years). The Supreme Court of Virginia ruled in 2018 that data collected from ALPRs can constitute personal information. As
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#17327804077316084-486: Is often referred to as Template OCR . Crowdsourcing humans to perform the character recognition can quickly process images like computer-driven OCR, but with higher accuracy for recognizing images than that obtained via computers. Practical systems include the Amazon Mechanical Turk and reCAPTCHA . The National Library of Finland has developed an online interface for users to correct OCRed texts in
6201-464: Is only possible on dedicated ANPR cameras, however, and so cameras used for other purposes must rely more heavily on the software capabilities. Further, when a full-colour image is required as well as use of the ANPR-retrieved details, it is necessary to have one infrared-enabled camera and one normal (colour) camera working together. To avoid blurring it is ideal to have the shutter speed of
6318-470: Is tested by the Danish police. It has been in permanent use since mid 2016. 180 gantries over major roads have been built throughout the country. These together with a further 250 fixed cameras is to enable a levy of an eco tax on lorries over 3.5 tonnes. The system is currently being opposed and whilst they may be collecting data on vehicles passing the cameras, no eco tax is being charged. On 11 March 2008,
6435-434: Is the inability of OCR to differentiate between the " long s " and "f" characters. Web-based OCR systems for recognizing hand-printed text on the fly have become well known as commercial products in recent years (see Tablet PC history ). Accuracy rates of 80% to 90% on neat, clean hand-printed characters can be achieved by pen computing software, but that accuracy rate still translates to dozens of errors per page, making
6552-572: Is then performed on each section individually using variable character confidence level thresholds to maximize page-level OCR accuracy. A patent from the United States Patent Office has been issued for this method. The OCR result can be stored in the standardized ALTO format, a dedicated XML schema maintained by the United States Library of Congress . Other common formats include hOCR and PAGE XML. For
6669-453: Is useful for uncovering unexpected interactions that affect performance. Benchmarks may be used to compare before/after potential improvements to an algorithm after program optimization. Empirical tests cannot replace formal analysis, though, and are non-trivial to perform fairly. To illustrate the potential improvements possible even in well-established algorithms, a recent significant innovation, relating to FFT algorithms (used heavily in
6786-1107: The Entscheidungsproblem (decision problem) posed by David Hilbert . Later formalizations were framed as attempts to define " effective calculability " or "effective method". Those formalizations included the Gödel – Herbrand – Kleene recursive functions of 1930, 1934 and 1935, Alonzo Church 's lambda calculus of 1936, Emil Post 's Formulation 1 of 1936, and Alan Turing 's Turing machines of 1936–37 and 1939. Algorithms can be expressed in many kinds of notation, including natural languages , pseudocode , flowcharts , drakon-charts , programming languages or control tables (processed by interpreters ). Natural language expressions of algorithms tend to be verbose and ambiguous and are rarely used for complex or technical algorithms. Pseudocode, flowcharts, drakon-charts, and control tables are structured expressions of algorithms that avoid common ambiguities of natural language. Programming languages are primarily for expressing algorithms in
6903-454: The Amount line of a check (which is always a written-out number) is an example where using a smaller dictionary can increase recognition rates greatly. The shapes of individual cursive characters themselves simply do not contain enough information to accurately (greater than 98%) recognize all handwritten cursive script. Most programs allow users to set "confidence rates". This means that if
7020-748: The Department of Justice (Victoria) use both fixed and mobile ANPR systems. The New South Wales Police Force Highway Patrol were the first to trial and use a fixed ANPR camera system in Australia in 2005. In 2009 they began a roll-out of a mobile ANPR system (known officially as MANPR) with three infrared cameras fitted to its Highway Patrol fleet. The system identifies unregistered and stolen vehicles as well as disqualified or suspended drivers as well as other 'persons of interest' such as persons having outstanding warrants. The city of Mechelen uses an ANPR system since September 2011 to scan all cars crossing
7137-553: The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled that some areas of the laws permitting the use of automated number plate recognition systems in Germany violated the right to privacy . More specifically, the court found that the retention of any sort of information (i.e., number plate data) which was not for any pre-destined use (e.g., for use tracking suspected terrorists or for enforcement of speeding laws)
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#17327804077317254-629: The Jacquard loom , a precursor to Hollerith cards (punch cards), and "telephone switching technologies" led to the development of the first computers. By the mid-19th century, the telegraph , the precursor of the telephone, was in use throughout the world. By the late 19th century, the ticker tape ( c. 1870s ) was in use, as were Hollerith cards (c. 1890). Then came the teleprinter ( c. 1910 ) with its punched-paper use of Baudot code on tape. Telephone-switching networks of electromechanical relays were invented in 1835. These led to
7371-690: The Los Angeles Police Department proposed sending letters to the home addresses of all vehicles that enter areas of high prostitution. Early private sector mobile ANPR applications have been for vehicle repossession and recovery, although the application of ANPR by private companies to collect information from privately owned vehicles or collected from private property (for example, driveways) has become an issue of sensitivity and public debate. Other ANPR uses include parking enforcement, and revenue collection from individuals who are delinquent on city or state taxes or fines. The technology
7488-711: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found that the warrantless use of automated license plate readers to surveil a suspected heroin distributor's bridge crossings to Cape Cod did not violate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution only because of the limited time and scope of the observations. ANPR is used for speed limit enforcement in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Dubai (UAE), France, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, South Africa,
7605-626: The 'Western Arabic' equivalents. A research with source code is available for APNR Arabic digits. The technique is tested by the Swedish Police Authority at nine different locations in Sweden. Several cities have tested—and some have put into service—the KGYS (Kent Guvenlik Yonetim Sistemi, City Security Administration System) , i.e., capital Ankara, has debuted KGYS- which consists of a registration plate number recognition system on
7722-469: The 2000s, OCR was made available online as a service (WebOCR), in a cloud computing environment, and in mobile applications like real-time translation of foreign-language signs on a smartphone . With the advent of smartphones and smartglasses , OCR can be used in internet connected mobile device applications that extract text captured using the device's camera. These devices that do not have built-in OCR functionality will typically use an OCR API to extract
7839-792: The Ifa Oracle (around 500 BC), Greek mathematics (around 240 BC), and Arabic mathematics (around 800 AD). The earliest evidence of algorithms is found in ancient Mesopotamian mathematics. A Sumerian clay tablet found in Shuruppak near Baghdad and dated to c. 2500 BC describes the earliest division algorithm . During the Hammurabi dynasty c. 1800 – c. 1600 BC , Babylonian clay tablets described algorithms for computing formulas. Algorithms were also used in Babylonian astronomy . Babylonian clay tablets describe and employ algorithmic procedures to compute
7956-666: The National ANPR Data Centre, which can be accessed, analysed and used as evidence as part of investigations by UK law enforcement agencies . In 2012, the UK Parliament enacted the Protection of Freedoms Act which includes several provisions related to controlling and restricting the collection, storage, retention, and use of information about individuals. Under this Act, the Home Office published
8073-611: The SICVe Vergilius. In addition to this average speed monitoring system, there are others Celeritas and T-Expeed v.2. Average speed cameras ( trajectcontrole ) are in place in the Netherlands since 2002. As of July 2009, 12 cameras were operational, mostly in the west of the country and along the A12 . Some of these are divided in several "sections" to allow for cars leaving and entering the motorway. A first experimental system
8190-426: The UK, and Kuwait. This works by tracking vehicles' travel time between two fixed points, and calculating the average speed. These cameras are claimed to have an advantage over traditional speed cameras in maintaining steady legal speeds over extended distances, rather than encouraging heavy braking on approach to specific camera locations and subsequent acceleration back to illegal speeds. In Italian highways there
8307-578: The United States had implemented Flock cameras, despite criticism from the ACLU and other civil rights organisations and concerns about whether the system actually reduces crime. Mobile ANPR use is widespread among US law enforcement agencies at the city, county, state and federal level. According to a 2012 report by the Police Executive Research Forum, approximately 71% of all US police departments use some form of ANPR. Mobile ANPR
8424-533: The United States, a claim consisting solely of simple manipulations of abstract concepts, numbers, or signals does not constitute "processes" (USPTO 2006), so algorithms are not patentable (as in Gottschalk v. Benson ). However practical applications of algorithms are sometimes patentable. For example, in Diamond v. Diehr , the application of a simple feedback algorithm to aid in the curing of synthetic rubber
8541-454: The algorithm itself, ignoring how it is implemented on the Turing machine. An implementation description describes the general manner in which the machine moves its head and stores data in order to carry out the algorithm, but does not give exact states. In the most detail, a formal description gives the exact state table and list of transitions of the Turing machine. The graphical aid called
8658-588: The algorithm's properties, not implementation. Pseudocode is typical for analysis as it is a simple and general representation. Most algorithms are implemented on particular hardware/software platforms and their algorithmic efficiency is tested using real code. The efficiency of a particular algorithm may be insignificant for many "one-off" problems but it may be critical for algorithms designed for fast interactive, commercial or long life scientific usage. Scaling from small n to large n frequently exposes inefficient algorithms that are otherwise benign. Empirical testing
8775-403: The analysis of algorithms to obtain such quantitative answers (estimates); for example, an algorithm that adds up the elements of a list of n numbers would have a time requirement of O ( n ) {\displaystyle O(n)} , using big O notation . The algorithm only needs to remember two values: the sum of all the elements so far, and its current position in
8892-547: The authority to order moving vehicles to stop, if a stolen car is found, the formal police is informed. Vehicle registration plates in Saudi Arabia use white background, but several vehicle types may have a different background. There are only 17 Arabic letters used on the registration plates. A challenge for plates recognition in Saudi Arabia is the size of the digits. Some plates use both Eastern Arabic numerals and
9009-430: The benefit of license plate reading in real time, when they can interdict immediately. Despite their effectiveness, there are noteworthy challenges related with mobile ANPRs. One of the biggest is that the processor and the cameras must work fast enough to accommodate relative speeds of more than 160 km/h (100 mph), a likely scenario in the case of oncoming traffic. This equipment must also be very efficient since
9126-463: The blind. In 1914, Emanuel Goldberg developed a machine that read characters and converted them into standard telegraph code. Concurrently, Edmund Fournier d'Albe developed the Optophone , a handheld scanner that when moved across a printed page, produced tones that corresponded to specific letters or characters. In the late 1920s and into the 1930s, Emanuel Goldberg developed what he called
9243-437: The camera is at a lower level and the vehicle is at an angle approaching the camera, the shutter speed does not need to be so fast. Shutter speeds of 1 ⁄ 500 of a second can cope with traffic moving up to 65 km/h (40 mph) and 1 ⁄ 250 of a second up to 8 km/h (5 mph). License plate capture cameras can produce usable images from vehicles traveling at 190 km/h (120 mph). To maximize
9360-425: The camera to take the picture at any time of day or night. ANPR technology must take into account plate variations from place to place. Privacy issues have caused concerns about ANPR, such as government tracking citizens' movements, misidentification, high error rates, and increased government spending. Critics have described it as a form of mass surveillance . ANPR is sometimes known by various other terms: ANPR
9477-471: The chances of effective license plate capture, installers should carefully consider the positioning of the camera relative to the target capture area. Exceeding threshold angles of incidence between camera lens and license plate will greatly reduce the probability of obtaining usable images due to distortion. Manufacturers have developed tools to help eliminate errors from the physical installation of license plate capture cameras. Several State Police Forces, and
9594-599: The city limits (inbound and outbound). Cars listed on ' black lists ' (no insurance, stolen, etc.) generate an alarm in the dispatching room, so they can be intercepted by a patrol. As of early 2012, 1 million cars per week are automatically checked in this way. Federal, provincial, and municipal police services across Canada use automatic licence plate recognition software; they are also used on certain toll routes and by parking enforcement agencies. Laws governing usage of information thus obtained use of such devices are mandated through various provincial privacy acts. The technique
9711-828: The contents. There are several techniques for solving the problem of character recognition by means other than improved OCR algorithms. Special fonts like OCR-A , OCR-B , or MICR fonts, with precisely specified sizing, spacing, and distinctive character shapes, allow a higher accuracy rate during transcription in bank check processing. Several prominent OCR engines were designed to capture text in popular fonts such as Arial or Times New Roman, and are incapable of capturing text in these fonts that are specialized and very different from popularly used fonts. As Google Tesseract can be trained to recognize new fonts, it can recognize OCR-A, OCR-B and MICR fonts. Comb fields are pre-printed boxes that encourage humans to write more legibly – one glyph per box. These are often printed in
9828-407: The contrast of the image. In some countries, the characters on the plate are not reflective, giving a high level of contrast with the reflective background in any lighting conditions. A camera that makes use of active infrared imaging (with a normal colour filter over the lens and an infrared illuminator next to it) benefits greatly from this as the infrared waves are reflected back from the plate. This
9945-406: The document contains words not in the lexicon, like proper nouns . Tesseract uses its dictionary to influence the character segmentation step, for improved accuracy. The output stream may be a plain text stream or file of characters, but more sophisticated OCR systems can preserve the original layout of the page and produce, for example, an annotated PDF that includes both the original image of
10062-521: The earliest codebreaking algorithm. Bolter credits the invention of the weight-driven clock as "the key invention [of Europe in the Middle Ages ]," specifically the verge escapement mechanism producing the tick and tock of a mechanical clock. "The accurate automatic machine" led immediately to "mechanical automata " in the 13th century and "computational machines"—the difference and analytical engines of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace in
10179-523: The early 12th century, Latin translations of said al-Khwarizmi texts involving the Hindu–Arabic numeral system and arithmetic appeared, for example Liber Alghoarismi de practica arismetrice , attributed to John of Seville , and Liber Algorismi de numero Indorum , attributed to Adelard of Bath . Hereby, alghoarismi or algorismi is the Latinization of Al-Khwarizmi's name; the text starts with
10296-618: The end of 2015. Within the system, 160 portable traffic enforcement and data-gathering units and 365 permanent gantry installations were brought online with ANPR, speed detection, imaging and statistical capabilities. Since all the data points are connected to a centrally located ITS, each member of the consortium is able to separately utilize its range of administrative and enforcement activities, such as remote vehicle registration and insurance verification, speed, lane and traffic light enforcement and wanted or stolen vehicle interception among others. Several Hungarian auxiliary police units also use
10413-427: The field of image processing), can decrease processing time up to 1,000 times for applications like medical imaging. In general, speed improvements depend on special properties of the problem, which are very common in practical applications. Speedups of this magnitude enable computing devices that make extensive use of image processing (like digital cameras and medical equipment) to consume less power. Algorithm design
10530-402: The increased skew of the plate. On some cars, tow bars may obscure one or two characters of the license plate. Bikes on bike racks can also obscure the number plate, though in some countries and jurisdictions, such as Victoria, Australia , "bike plates" are supposed to be fitted. Some small-scale systems allow for some errors in the license plate. When used for giving specific vehicles access to
10647-450: The input list. If the space required to store the input numbers is not counted, it has a space requirement of O ( 1 ) {\displaystyle O(1)} , otherwise O ( n ) {\displaystyle O(n)} is required. Different algorithms may complete the same task with a different set of instructions in less or more time, space, or ' effort ' than others. For example,
10764-490: The invention of the digital adding device by George Stibitz in 1937. While working in Bell Laboratories, he observed the "burdensome" use of mechanical calculators with gears. "He went home one evening in 1937 intending to test his idea... When the tinkering was over, Stibitz had constructed a binary adding device". In 1928, a partial formalization of the modern concept of algorithms began with attempts to solve
10881-594: The leaders of the National Federation of the Blind . In 1978, Kurzweil Computer Products began selling a commercial version of the optical character recognition computer program. LexisNexis was one of the first customers, and bought the program to upload legal paper and news documents onto its nascent online databases. Two years later, Kurzweil sold his company to Xerox , which eventually spun it off as Scansoft , which merged with Nuance Communications . In
10998-467: The license plate. ANPR 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
11115-463: The main arteries and city exits. The system has been used with two cameras per lane, one for plate recognition, one for speed detection. Now the system has been widened to network all the registration number cameras together, and enforcing average speed over preset distances. Some arteries have 70 km/h (45 mph) limit, and some 50 km/h (30 mph), and photo evidence with date-time details are posted to registration address if speed violation
11232-429: The mid-19th century. Lovelace designed the first algorithm intended for processing on a computer, Babbage's analytical engine, which is the first device considered a real Turing-complete computer instead of just a calculator . Although a full implementation of Babbage's second device was not realized for decades after her lifetime, Lovelace has been called "history's first programmer". Bell and Newell (1971) write that
11349-722: The most authoritative of the Annual Test of OCR Accuracy from 1992 to 1996. Recognition of typewritten, Latin script text is still not 100% accurate even where clear imaging is available. One study based on recognition of 19th- and early 20th-century newspaper pages concluded that character-by-character OCR accuracy for commercial OCR software varied from 81% to 99%; total accuracy can be achieved by human review or Data Dictionary Authentication. Other areas – including recognition of hand printing, cursive handwriting, and printed text in other scripts (especially those East Asian language characters which have many strokes for
11466-627: The most important aspects of algorithm design is resource (run-time, memory usage) efficiency; the big O notation is used to describe e.g., an algorithm's run-time growth as the size of its input increases. Per the Church–Turing thesis , any algorithm can be computed by any Turing complete model. Turing completeness only requires four instruction types—conditional GOTO, unconditional GOTO, assignment, HALT. However, Kemeny and Kurtz observe that, while "undisciplined" use of unconditional GOTOs and conditional IF-THEN GOTOs can result in " spaghetti code ",
11583-406: The page and a searchable textual representation. Near-neighbor analysis can make use of co-occurrence frequencies to correct errors, by noting that certain words are often seen together. For example, "Washington, D.C." is generally far more common in English than "Washington DOC". Knowledge of the grammar of the language being scanned can also help determine if a word is likely to be a verb or
11700-416: The pen down and lifting it. This additional information can make the process more accurate. This technology is also known as "online character recognition", "dynamic character recognition", "real-time character recognition", and "intelligent character recognition". OCR software often pre-processes images to improve the chances of successful recognition. Techniques include: Segmentation of fixed-pitch fonts
11817-564: The phrase Dixit Algorismi , or "Thus spoke Al-Khwarizmi". Around 1230, the English word algorism is attested and then by Chaucer in 1391, English adopted the French term. In the 15th century, under the influence of the Greek word ἀριθμός ( arithmos , "number"; cf. "arithmetic"), the Latin word was altered to algorithmus . One informal definition is "a set of rules that precisely defines
11934-399: The plates would be passing the camera's field of view. Further scaled-down components at lower price points led to a record number of deployments by law enforcement agencies globally. Smaller cameras with the ability to read license plates at higher speeds, along with smaller, more durable processors that fit in the trunks of police vehicles, allowed law enforcement officers to patrol daily with
12051-454: The power source is the vehicle electrical system, and equipment must have minimal space requirements. Relative speed is only one issue that affects the camera's ability to read a license plate. Algorithms must be able to compensate for all the variables that can affect the ANPR's ability to produce an accurate read, such as time of day, weather and angles between the cameras and the license plates. A system's illumination wavelengths can also have
12168-659: The software does not achieve their desired level of accuracy, a user can be notified for manual review. An error introduced by OCR scanning is sometimes termed a scanno (by analogy with the term typo ). Characters to support OCR were added to the Unicode Standard in June 1993, with the release of version 1.1. Some of these characters are mapped from fonts specific to MICR , OCR-A or OCR-B . Algorithm In mathematics and computer science , an algorithm ( / ˈ æ l ɡ ə r ɪ ð əm / )
12285-408: The software requires for identifying a license plate: The complexity of each of these subsections of the program determines the accuracy of the system. During the third phase (normalization), some systems use edge detection techniques to increase the picture difference between the letters and the plate backing. A median filter may also be used to reduce the visual noise on the image. There are
12402-406: The speed of the vehicles being recorded, varying level of ambient light, headlight glare and harsh environmental conditions. Most dedicated license plate capture cameras will incorporate infrared illumination in order to solve the problems of lighting and plate reflectivity. Many countries now use license plates that are retroreflective . This returns the light back to the source and thus improves
12519-576: The standardized ALTO format. Crowd sourcing has also been used not to perform character recognition directly but to invite software developers to develop image processing algorithms, for example, through the use of rank-order tournaments . Commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Information Science Research Institute (ISRI) had the mission to foster the improvement of automated technologies for understanding machine printed documents, and it conducted
12636-458: The technology useful only in very limited applications. Recognition of cursive text is an active area of research, with recognition rates even lower than that of hand-printed text . Higher rates of recognition of general cursive script will likely not be possible without the use of contextual or grammatical information. For example, recognizing entire words from a dictionary is easier than trying to parse individual characters from script. Reading
12753-688: The text from the image file captured by the device. The OCR API returns the extracted text, along with information about the location of the detected text in the original image back to the device app for further processing (such as text-to-speech) or display. Various commercial and open source OCR systems are available for most common writing systems , including Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Indic, Bengali (Bangla), Devanagari, Tamil, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters. OCR engines have been developed into software applications specializing in various subjects such as receipts, invoices, checks, and legal billing documents. The software can be used for: OCR
12870-675: The time and place of significant astronomical events. Algorithms for arithmetic are also found in ancient Egyptian mathematics , dating back to the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus c. 1550 BC . Algorithms were later used in ancient Hellenistic mathematics . Two examples are the Sieve of Eratosthenes , which was described in the Introduction to Arithmetic by Nicomachus , and the Euclidean algorithm , which
12987-524: Was confirmed that speeding tickets could potentially be avoided from the ' SPECS ' cameras by changing lanes and the RAC Foundation feared that people may play "Russian Roulette" changing from one lane to another to lessen their odds of being caught; however, in 2007 the system was upgraded for multi-lane use and in 2008 the manufacturer described the "myth" as "categorically untrue". There exists evidence that implementation of systems such as SPECS has
13104-449: Was deemed patentable. The patenting of software is controversial, and there are criticized patents involving algorithms, especially data compression algorithms, such as Unisys 's LZW patent . Additionally, some cryptographic algorithms have export restrictions (see export of cryptography ). Another way of classifying algorithms is by their design methodology or paradigm . Some common paradigms are: For optimization problems there
13221-692: Was first described in Euclid's Elements ( c. 300 BC ). Examples of ancient Indian mathematics included the Shulba Sutras , the Kerala School , and the Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta . The first cryptographic algorithm for deciphering encrypted code was developed by Al-Kindi , a 9th-century Arab mathematician, in A Manuscript On Deciphering Cryptographic Messages . He gave the first description of cryptanalysis by frequency analysis ,
13338-402: Was in use by companies, including CompuScan, in the late 1960s and 1970s. ) Kurzweil used the technology to create a reading machine for blind people to have a computer read text to them out loud. The device included a CCD -type flatbed scanner and a text-to-speech synthesizer. On January 13, 1976, the finished product was unveiled during a widely reported news conference headed by Kurzweil and
13455-639: Was in violation of German law. These systems were provided by Jenoptik Robot GmbH, and called TraffiCapture. In 2012 a state consortium was formed among the Hungarian Ministry of Interior, the National Police Headquarters and the Central Commission of Public Administration and Electronic Services with the aim to install and operate a unified intelligent transportation system ( ITS ) with nationwide coverage by
13572-726: Was invented in 1976 at the Police Scientific Development Branch in Britain. Prototype systems were working by 1979, and contracts were awarded to produce industrial systems, first at EMI Electronics, and then at Computer Recognition Systems (CRS, now part of Jenoptik ) in Wokingham , UK. Early trial systems were deployed on the A1 road and at the Dartford Tunnel . The first arrest through detection of
13689-580: Was tested on a short stretch of the A2 in 1997 and was deemed a big success by the police, reducing overspeeding to 0.66%, compared to 5 to 6% when regular speed cameras were used at the same location. The first permanent average speed cameras were installed on the A13 in 2002, shortly after the speed limit was reduced to 80 km/h (50 mph) to limit noise and air pollution in the area. In 2007, average speed cameras resulted in 1.7 million fines for overspeeding out of
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