Automatic Number Plate Recognition System Based on Deep Learning

In the last few years, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) systems have become widely used in the safety, the security, and the commercial aspects. Forethought, several methods and techniques are computing to achieve the better levels in terms of accuracy and real time execution. This paper proposed a computer vision algorithm of Number Plate Localization (NPL) and Characters Segmentation (CS). In addition, it proposed an improved method in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) based on Deep Learning (DL) techniques. In order to identify the number of detected plate after NPL and CS steps, the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) algorithm is proposed. A DL model is developed using four convolution layers, two layers of Maxpooling, and six layers of fully connected. The model was trained by number image database on the Jetson TX2 NVIDIA target. The accuracy result has achieved 95.84%.

Non-Invasive Data Extraction from Machine Display Units Using Video Analytics

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform manufacturing by improving shop floor processes such as production, maintenance and quality. However, industrial datasets are notoriously difficult to extract in a real-time, streaming fashion thus, negating potential AI benefits. The main example is some specialized industrial controllers that are operated by custom software which complicates the process of connecting them to an Information Technology (IT) based data acquisition network. Security concerns may also limit direct physical access to these controllers for data acquisition. To connect the Operational Technology (OT) data stored in these controllers to an AI application in a secure, reliable and available way, we propose a novel Industrial IoT (IIoT) solution in this paper. In this solution, we demonstrate how video cameras can be installed in a factory shop floor to continuously obtain images of the controller HMIs. We propose image pre-processing to segment the HMI into regions of streaming data and regions of fixed meta-data. We then evaluate the performance of multiple Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technologies such as Tesseract and Google vision to recognize the streaming data and test it for typical factory HMIs and realistic lighting conditions. Finally, we use the meta-data to match the OCR output with the temporal, domain-dependent context of the data to improve the accuracy of the output. Our IIoT solution enables reliable and efficient data extraction which will improve the performance of subsequent AI applications.

Degraded Document Analysis and Extraction of Original Text Document: An Approach without Optical Character Recognition

Document Image Analysis recognizes text and graphics in documents acquired as images. An approach without Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for degraded document image analysis has been adopted in this paper. The technique involves document imaging methods such as Image Fusing and Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF) Detection to identify and extract the degraded regions from a set of document images to obtain an original document with complete information. In case, degraded document image captured is skewed, it has to be straightened (deskew) to perform further process. A special format of image storing known as YCbCr is used as a tool to convert the Grayscale image to RGB image format. The presented algorithm is tested on various types of degraded documents such as printed documents, handwritten documents, old script documents and handwritten image sketches in documents. The purpose of this research is to obtain an original document for a given set of degraded documents of the same source.

Pre-Analysis of Printed Circuit Boards Based On Multispectral Imaging for Vision Based Recognition of Electronics Waste

The increasing demand of gallium, indium and rare-earth elements for the production of electronics, e.g. solid state-lighting, photovoltaics, integrated circuits, and liquid crystal displays, will exceed the world-wide supply according to current forecasts. Recycling systems to reclaim these materials are not yet in place, which challenges the sustainability of these technologies. This paper proposes a multispectral imaging system as a basis for a vision based recognition system for valuable components of electronics waste. Multispectral images intend to enhance the contrast of images of printed circuit boards (single components, as well as labels) for further analysis, such as optical character recognition and entire printed circuit board recognition. The results show, that a higher contrast is achieved in the near infrared compared to ultraviolett and visible light.

OCR for Script Identification of Hindi (Devnagari) Numerals using Feature Sub Selection by Means of End-Point with Neuro-Memetic Model

Recognition of Indian languages scripts is challenging problems. In Optical Character Recognition [OCR], a character or symbol to be recognized can be machine printed or handwritten characters/numerals. There are several approaches that deal with problem of recognition of numerals/character depending on the type of feature extracted and different way of extracting them. This paper proposes a recognition scheme for handwritten Hindi (devnagiri) numerals; most admired one in Indian subcontinent. Our work focused on a technique in feature extraction i.e. global based approach using end-points information, which is extracted from images of isolated numerals. These feature vectors are fed to neuro-memetic model [18] that has been trained to recognize a Hindi numeral. The archetype of system has been tested on varieties of image of numerals. . In proposed scheme data sets are fed to neuro-memetic algorithm, which identifies the rule with highest fitness value of nearly 100 % & template associates with this rule is nothing but identified numerals. Experimentation result shows that recognition rate is 92-97 % compared to other models.

Identification of Printed Punjabi Words and English Numerals Using Gabor Features

Script identification is one of the challenging steps in the development of optical character recognition system for bilingual or multilingual documents. In this paper an attempt is made for identification of English numerals at word level from Punjabi documents by using Gabor features. The support vector machine (SVM) classifier with five fold cross validation is used to classify the word images. The results obtained are quite encouraging. Average accuracy with RBF kernel, Polynomial and Linear Kernel functions comes out to be greater than 99%.

A Study of Touching Characters in Degraded Gurmukhi Text

Character segmentation is an important preprocessing step for text recognition. In degraded documents, existence of touching characters decreases recognition rate drastically, for any optical character recognition (OCR) system. In this paper a study of touching Gurmukhi characters is carried out and these characters have been divided into various categories after a careful analysis.Structural properties of the Gurmukhi characters are used for defining the categories. New algorithms have been proposed to segment the touching characters in middle zone. These algorithms have shown a reasonable improvement in segmenting the touching characters in degraded Gurmukhi script. The algorithms proposed in this paper are applicable only to machine printed text.

OCR for Script Identification of Hindi (Devnagari) Numerals using Error Diffusion Halftoning Algorithm with Neural Classifier

The applications on numbers are across-the-board that there is much scope for study. The chic of writing numbers is diverse and comes in a variety of form, size and fonts. Identification of Indian languages scripts is challenging problems. In Optical Character Recognition [OCR], machine printed or handwritten characters/numerals are recognized. There are plentiful approaches that deal with problem of detection of numerals/character depending on the sort of feature extracted and different way of extracting them. This paper proposes a recognition scheme for handwritten Hindi (devnagiri) numerals; most admired one in Indian subcontinent our work focused on a technique in feature extraction i.e. Local-based approach, a method using 16-segment display concept, which is extracted from halftoned images & Binary images of isolated numerals. These feature vectors are fed to neural classifier model that has been trained to recognize a Hindi numeral. The archetype of system has been tested on varieties of image of numerals. Experimentation result shows that recognition rate of halftoned images is 98 % compared to binary images (95%).

Alphanumeric Hand-Prints Classification: Similarity Analysis between Local Decisions

This paper presents the analysis of similarity between local decisions, in the process of alphanumeric hand-prints classification. From the analysis of local characteristics of handprinted numerals and characters, extracted by a zoning method, the set of classification decisions is obtained and the similarity among them is investigated. For this purpose the Similarity Index is used, which is an estimator of similarity between classifiers, based on the analysis of agreements between their decisions. The experimental tests, carried out using numerals and characters from the CEDAR and ETL database, respectively, show to what extent different parts of the patterns provide similar classification decisions.

Optimizing Feature Selection for Recognizing Handwritten Arabic Characters

Recognition of characters greatly depends upon the features used. Several features of the handwritten Arabic characters are selected and discussed. An off-line recognition system based on the selected features was built. The system was trained and tested with realistic samples of handwritten Arabic characters. Evaluation of the importance and accuracy of the selected features is made. The recognition based on the selected features give average accuracies of 88% and 70% for the numbers and letters, respectively. Further improvements are achieved by using feature weights based on insights gained from the accuracies of individual features.

Skew Detection Technique for Binary Document Images based on Hough Transform

Document image processing has become an increasingly important technology in the automation of office documentation tasks. During document scanning, skew is inevitably introduced into the incoming document image. Since the algorithm for layout analysis and character recognition are generally very sensitive to the page skew. Hence, skew detection and correction in document images are the critical steps before layout analysis. In this paper, a novel skew detection method is presented for binary document images. The method considered the some selected characters of the text which may be subjected to thinning and Hough transform to estimate skew angle accurately. Several experiments have been conducted on various types of documents such as documents containing English Documents, Journals, Text-Book, Different Languages and Document with different fonts, Documents with different resolutions, to reveal the robustness of the proposed method. The experimental results revealed that the proposed method is accurate compared to the results of well-known existing methods.

Recognition-based Segmentation in Persian Character Recognition

Optical character recognition of cursive scripts presents a number of challenging problems in both segmentation and recognition processes in different languages, including Persian. In order to overcome these problems, we use a newly developed Persian word segmentation method and a recognition-based segmentation technique to overcome its segmentation problems. This method is robust as well as flexible. It also increases the system-s tolerances to font variations. The implementation results of this method on a comprehensive database show a high degree of accuracy which meets the requirements for commercial use. Extended with a suitable pre and post-processing, the method offers a simple and fast framework to develop a full OCR system.

Estimation of Skew Angle in Binary Document Images Using Hough Transform

This paper includes two novel techniques for skew estimation of binary document images. These algorithms are based on connected component analysis and Hough transform. Both these methods focus on reducing the amount of input data provided to Hough transform. In the first method, referred as word centroid approach, the centroids of selected words are used for skew detection. In the second method, referred as dilate & thin approach, the selected characters are blocked and dilated to get word blocks and later thinning is applied. The final image fed to Hough transform has the thinned coordinates of word blocks in the image. The methods have been successful in reducing the computational complexity of Hough transform based skew estimation algorithms. Promising experimental results are also provided to prove the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

A Study of the Variability of Very Low Resolution Characters and the Feasibility of Their Discrimination Using Geometrical Features

Current OCR technology does not allow to accurately recognizing small text images, such as those found in web images. Our goal is to investigate new approaches to recognize very low resolution text images containing antialiased character shapes. This paper presents a preliminary study on the variability of such characters and the feasibility to discriminate them by using geometrical features. In a first stage we analyze the distribution of these features. In a second stage we present a study on the discriminative power for recognizing isolated characters, using various rendering methods and font properties. Finally we present interesting results of our evaluation tests leading to our conclusion and future focus.

Persian Printed Numeral Characters Recognition Using Geometrical Central Moments and Fuzzy Min-Max Neural Network

In this paper, a new proposed system for Persian printed numeral characters recognition with emphasis on representation and recognition stages is introduced. For the first time, in Persian optical character recognition, geometrical central moments as character image descriptor and fuzzy min-max neural network for Persian numeral character recognition has been used. Set of different experiments on binary images of regular, translated, rotated and scaled Persian numeral characters has been done and variety of results has been presented. The best result was 99.16% correct recognition demonstrating geometrical central moments and fuzzy min-max neural network are adequate for Persian printed numeral character recognition.

Segmentation Problems and Solutions in Printed Degraded Gurmukhi Script

Character segmentation is an important preprocessing step for text recognition. In degraded documents, existence of touching characters decreases recognition rate drastically, for any optical character recognition (OCR) system. In this paper we have proposed a complete solution for segmenting touching characters in all the three zones of printed Gurmukhi script. A study of touching Gurmukhi characters is carried out and these characters have been divided into various categories after a careful analysis. Structural properties of the Gurmukhi characters are used for defining the categories. New algorithms have been proposed to segment the touching characters in middle zone, upper zone and lower zone. These algorithms have shown a reasonable improvement in segmenting the touching characters in degraded printed Gurmukhi script. The algorithms proposed in this paper are applicable only to machine printed text. We have also discussed a new and useful technique to segment the horizontally overlapping lines.

Application of Genetic Algorithms to Feature Subset Selection in a Farsi OCR

Dealing with hundreds of features in character recognition systems is not unusual. This large number of features leads to the increase of computational workload of recognition process. There have been many methods which try to remove unnecessary or redundant features and reduce feature dimensionality. Besides because of the characteristics of Farsi scripts, it-s not possible to apply other languages algorithms to Farsi directly. In this paper some methods for feature subset selection using genetic algorithms are applied on a Farsi optical character recognition (OCR) system. Experimental results show that application of genetic algorithms (GA) to feature subset selection in a Farsi OCR results in lower computational complexity and enhanced recognition rate.

A Persian OCR System using Morphological Operators

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a very old and of great interest in pattern recognition field. In this paper we introduce a very powerful approach to recognize Persian text. We have used morphological operators, especially Hit/Miss operator to descript each sub-word and by using a template matching approach we have tried to classify generated description. We used just one font in two different sizes to verify our approach. We achieved a very good rate, up to 99.9%.

Block Sorting: A New Characterization and a New Heuristic

The Block Sorting problem is to sort a given permutation moving blocks. A block is defined as a substring of the given permutation, which is also a substring of the identity permutation. Block Sorting has been proved to be NP-Hard. Until now two different 2-Approximation algorithms have been presented for block sorting. These are the best known algorithms for Block Sorting till date. In this work we present a different characterization of Block Sorting in terms of a transposition cycle graph. Then we suggest a heuristic, which we show to exhibit a 2-approximation performance guarantee for most permutations.

Urdu Nastaleeq Optical Character Recognition

This paper discusses the Urdu script characteristics, Urdu Nastaleeq and a simple but a novel and robust technique to recognize the printed Urdu script without a lexicon. Urdu being a family of Arabic script is cursive and complex script in its nature, the main complexity of Urdu compound/connected text is not its connections but the forms/shapes the characters change when it is placed at initial, middle or at the end of a word. The characters recognition technique presented here is using the inherited complexity of Urdu script to solve the problem. A word is scanned and analyzed for the level of its complexity, the point where the level of complexity changes is marked for a character, segmented and feeded to Neural Networks. A prototype of the system has been tested on Urdu text and currently achieves 93.4% accuracy on the average.