Chapter 4: Automatic Number Plate Recognition using SVM and Neural Networks

This code is sample code to understand how automatic license plate recognition (ANPR) works. It is not for production tasks. You can use this code as a sample & guide to create your own custom ANPR or OCR applications.

Requirements

• OpenCV 4+ (with components core, highgui, ml, flann, dnn)

Building the project using CMake

Linux

export OpenCV_DIR="~/OpenCV/build"
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -D OpenCV_DIR=$OpenCV_DIR ..
cmake --build .

MacOSX (Xcode)

export OpenCV_DIR="~/OpenCV/build"
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G Xcode -D OpenCV_DIR=$OpenCV_DIR ..
open ANPR.xcodeproj

Windows (MS Visual Studio)

set OpenCV_DIR="C:\OpenCV\build"
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G "Visual Studio 9 2008" -D OpenCV_DIR=%OpenCV_DIR% ..
start ANPR.sln

Running the project:

ANPR test/2715DTZ.jpg

You can choose other images that are in the test folder or other images that contain a spanish license plate taken from 2 to 3 meters. There are also some UNIX Bash scripts in the "utils" folder for Linux or Mac, that need Cygwin to run on Windows.

Author

David Millán Escrivá
http://blog.damiles.com