Features

Our ANPR products support multiple core features required to implement advanced solutions.

Feature

Availability

Image Enhancement for Night-Vision (IENV)

UltimateALPR 3.2.0, UltimateITS 2.0.0

License Plate Recognition (LPR)

UltimateALPR 2.0.0, UltimateITS 2.0.0

License Plate Country Identification (LPCI)

UltimateALPR 3.0.0, UltimateITS 2.0.0

Vehicle Color Recognition (VCR)

UltimateALPR 3.0.0, UltimateITS 2.0.0

Vehicle Make Model Recognition (VMMR)

UltimateALPR 3.0.0, UltimateITS 2.0.0

Vehicle Body Style Recognition (VBSR)

UltimateALPR 3.2.0, UltimateITS 2.0.0

Vehicle Direction Tracking (VDT)

UltimateITS 2.0.0

Vehicle Speed Estimation (VSE)

UltimateITS 2.0.0

The next video shows LPR, LPCI, VCR and VMMR running on Windows:


Image Enhancement for Night-Vision (IENV)

This is an amazing feature used to improve the quality of low contrast images from a video stream captured at night. When enabled IENV improves the overall accuracy for all other features (Car/plate detection, License Plate Recognition (LPR), License Plate Country Identification (LPCI), Vehicle Make Model Recognition (VMMR), Vehicle Color Recognition (VCR), Vehicle Body Style Recognition (VBSR), Vehicle Direction Tracking (VDT), Vehicle Speed Estimation (VSE)…).

IENV is CPU intensive but we made it fully SIMD accelerated (SSE, AVX, NEON) and massively multithreaded to reduce the latency. Using 720p images (1280x720) you can expect up to 2 milliseconds latency (500fps throughput) on Intel i7-4790K (x86-64). This feature is also optimized on ARM CPUs (thanks to NEON) but we only recommend it on high-end device.

Anti-Overexposure

IENV contains an anti-overexposure module (always enabled) which means it can be enabled day and night regardless the luminosity.

Debugging

IENV is a filter applied on the images before any other function. You can dump the output of the filter to a local file as explained in the debugging section.

License Plate Recognition (LPR)

This is the main feature for an ANPR product and referred to as “the recognizer” in the rest of the document. This module recognize each character in the license plate using state-of-the-art Optical Character Recognition (OCR). We also return the confidence/score for each character.

Input

Output (OCR)

_images/usa.jpg

706YCQ

_images/germany.jpg

MXC808E

_images/russia.jpg

P001AM77

_images/uae-dubai.jpg

D8878

_images/korea.jpg

서울31바5533

Supported countries

Unlike other companies we don’t segment our implementation by region but are grouping them by charset (e.g. Latin, Korean, Arabic, Chinese…). The reference models provided on Github are trained on Latin charset ([A-Z0-9]) using license plates from more than 150 countries. The dataset predominantly contains European license plates as this is where our company is based and most of our customers are using this SDK in Europe. The implementation will work with any country using Latin charset like USA, Canada, Russia, Armenia, Monaco, India, UK, Turkey, Argentina, Mexico, Indonesia, Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Mauritania, Senegal… If you have any accuracy issues with your country please let us know and we’ll add more samples in the dataset. If you can provide your own dataset it would be great.

Starting version 2.7.0 we support Korean license plates.

License Plate Country Identification (LPCI)

License Plate Recognition (LPR) module returns the content of the plate using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) but doesn’t return the country and state of the plate. License Plate Country Identification (LPCI) is used to identify the country of issue. This module uses both classification and OCR to identify the country and state.

Input

Output (Country)

Output (State)

Techniques

_images/usa-tennessee.jpg

USA

Tennessee

Classification

_images/canada-alberta.jpg

Canada

Alberta

Classification

_images/uae-dubai1.jpg

United Arab Emirates

Dubai

Classification

_images/germany1.jpg

Germany

Classification

_images/korea1.jpg

Republic of Korea

Classification

_images/russia-moscow.jpg

Russian Federation

Moscow

Classification + OCR

_images/kazakhstan-mangystau.jpg

Kazakhstan

Mangystau Province

Classification + OCR

Identifiable countries

Danger

This is not the list of supported countries. Check here for the list of supported countries.

127 countries or states are identifiable:
  • ALB-Albania

  • AND-Andorra

  • ARE-United_Arab_Emirates + 7 emirates (Abu_Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras_al_Khaimah, Sharjah, Umm_al_Qaiwain)

  • ARM-Armenia

  • AUS-Australia

  • AUT-Austria

  • AZE-Azerbaijan

  • BEL-Belgium

  • BGR-Bulgaria

  • BIH-Bosnia_and_Herzegovina

  • BLR-Belarus

  • BRA-Brazil

  • CAN-Canada + 10 provinces (Alberta, British_Columbia, Manitoba, New_Brunswick, Newfoundland_and_Labrador, Nova_Scotia, Ontario, Prince_Edward_Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan)

  • CHE-Switzerland

  • CYP-Cyprus

  • CZE-Czechia

  • DEU-Germany

  • DNK-Denmark

  • ESP-Spain

  • EST-Estonia

  • FIN-Finland

  • FRA-France

  • GBR-United_Kingdom_of_Great_Britain_and_Northern_Ireland

  • GEO-Georgia

  • GRC-Greece

  • HRV-Croatia

  • HUN-Hungary

  • IND-India

  • IRL-Ireland

  • ISL-Iceland

  • ISR-Israel

  • ITA-Italy

  • KAZ-Kazakhstan

  • KGZ-Kyrgyzstan

  • KOR-Republic_of_Korea

  • LIE-Liechtenstein

  • LTU-Lithuania

  • LUX-Luxembourg

  • LVA-Latvia

  • MCO-Monaco

  • MDA-Republic_of_Moldova

  • MKD-North_Macedonia

  • MLT-Malta

  • MNE-Montenegro

  • NLD-Netherlands

  • NOR-Norway

  • NZL-New_Zealand

  • POL-Poland

  • PRT-Portugal

  • ROU-Romania

  • RUS-Russian_Federation

  • SRB-Serbia

  • SVK-Slovakia

  • SVN-Slovenia

  • SWE-Sweden

  • TJK-Tajikistan

  • TKM-Turkmenistan

  • TUR-Turkey

  • TWN-Taiwan

  • UKR-Ukraine

  • USA-United_States_of_America + 51 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New_Hampshire, New_Jersey, New_Mexico, New_York, North_Carolina, North_Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode_Island, South_Carolina, South_Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington_DC, West_Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming)

  • UZB-Uzbekistan

Vehicle Color Recognition (VCR)

Vehicle Color Recognition (VCR) function retrieves the color information (top-5 results) using classification.

Input

Output (Color)

_images/brown.jpg

brown

_images/white.jpg

white

_images/silver.jpg

silver

Supported colors

The 12 most popular colors are supported:
  • black

  • blue

  • brown

  • gold

  • gray

  • green

  • orange

  • purple

  • red

  • silver

  • tan

  • white

  • yellow

The information about the popularity is based on https://www.carmax.com/articles/car-color-popularity.

Vehicle Make Model Recognition (VMMR)

Vehicle Make Model Recognition (VMMR) function retrieves the car make, model and year information (top-5 results). We also support Vehicle Color Recognition (VCR) and Vehicle Body Style Recognition (VBSR) as explained above.

Input

Output (Make)

Output (Model)

Output (Year)

_images/audi_rs6_2015.jpg

audi

rs6

2015

_images/bmw_x6_2019.jpg

bmw

x6

2015

_images/mercedes-benz_gle_2019.jpg

mercedes benz

gle

2019

Supported Makes

We support more than 300 makes (Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Renault…). Please check the source code for the complete list (ultimateALPR-SDK_klass_labels_vmmr.txt.doubango).

Note

The list will be updated every 6 months.

Supported Models and Years

We support more than 15,000 models (Yaris, GLE, X6, RS6, Clio…). Please check the source code for the complete list (ultimateALPR-SDK_klass_labels_vmmr.txt.doubango).

Note

The list will be updated every 6 months.

Vehicle Body Style Recognition (VBSR)

The VBSR function uses classification and returns the top-5 results. This function is independent of Vehicle Make Model Recognition (VMMR).

Input

Output (VBSR)

_images/bus.jpg

bus

_images/convertible.jpg

convertible

_images/heavytruck.jpg

heavytruck

_images/mpv.jpg

mpv

_images/pickup.jpg

pickup

_images/sedan.jpg

sedan

_images/van.jpg

van

VBSR could be used to detect rules violations:
  • Bus lanes restrictions

  • HGVs (heavy goods vehicles) or trucks restrictions

Supported body styles

The 12 most popular body styles are supported:
  • bus

  • campervan

  • convertible

  • coupe

  • hatchback

  • heavytruck

  • motorcycle

  • mpv

  • pickup

  • sedan

  • suv

  • van

Vehicle Direction Tracking (VDT)

This feature is only available on UltimateITS and used to track a vehicle using a unique identifier. Tracking a vehicle is a key functionality in order to implement bus lane enforcement, red light enforcement, speed detection, congestion detection, double white line crossing detection, incident detection… functions.

Vehicle Speed Estimation (VSE)

This feature is only available on UltimateITS and used to estimate the vehicle speed. No camera calibration is required.