With the advancement of technology, a term that is becoming more relevant, especially in matters of security and law enforcement, is ANPR.
ANPR, an abbreviation for Automatic Number Plate Recognition, is a unique technology that assists in identifying and reading automobile number plates. Due to the evolution and growth of smart cities and the initiation of the digital policing norm, the ANPR camera system has become a crucial element in improving traffic control systems, assisting in law enforcement, and even protecting the country’s security.
This blog will focus on what is ANPR and how it works, components of ANPR system, applications of ANPR, and finally ANPR camera prices in India.
What is ANPR?
Automatic Number Plate Recognition is a system that applies specialized software to identify vehicle license plates. It tracks the number plates of the automobiles in real time, evaluates information, and verifies an existing database.
The systems are mostly utilized by police departments, toll booths, parking administration areas, and smart cities to ensure that vehicles are monitored and road safety is enhanced.
High efficiency is possessed by the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system as it can be employed to scan license plates even in poor lighting conditions or when cars are moving at a high rate of speed.
How Exactly Does the Automatic Number Plate Recognition System Function?
ANPR systems have hardware and software components that complement one another in collecting, analyzing, and storing vehicle plate information. This system is organized as follows:
- Photographing the Image Using ANPR Cameras: The main purpose of the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system is to fit it with ANPR cameras. Special cameras are installed in concentric locations such as traffic lights, toll booths, or entry/exit points in parking lots. They contain fast lenses and infrared systems for night visions to record photographs of vehicle registration plates under the night darkness.
- Image Collection: When a picture of the vehicle registration number plate is captured by an ANPR camera, it is usually overexposed on the screen. In this case, a specialized vertical-focused viewing system. Plates are processed to segregate each character.
ONVIF-compliant camera sensors provide live streaming to the LPU.
Image resolution is fine-tuned, enhancing clarity.
OCR converts segregated characters into digital text. Plus, the algorithms fed computed into Intozi’s ANPR systems understand different fonts, formats, and regional styles effectively. - Data Processing: Recognized number plate information, along with data like vehicle type, color, date, time, and location, is stored in a database.
Cameras can also capture metadata like speed and direction for enhanced analysis.
This information could include lost or stolen vehicles, monitoring of cars with outstanding debts, or the tracking of cars that cause trouble. - Real Time Use: Vehicle hotlisting provides instant details on suspicious vehicles.
Intozi’s advanced Centralized Management Systems manages mulitple devices in single platform and provides health monitoring of the device and broadcast alerts via SMS, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Email.
Integration with external platforms supports toll collection, traffic monitoring, and legacy ERP systems.
Components of the ANPR System
- Automatic Number Plate Recognition Camera: The ANPR camera is responsible for capturing images of the vehicle license plates. These cameras have been able to cope with different situations and get good images even from moving vehicles. They also allow evening and night capture since they operate on infrared light.
- ONVIF-Compliant Camera Sensors: One of the biggest benefit of using these sensors is that they are capable of capturing images even at high speeds.
- LPU: In the ANPR system an LPU is a component that receives live streaming from a camera sensor.
- OCR Software: OCR software performs the function of translating the image of the vehicle number plate into text. This software applies pattern recognition techniques to the images and identifies the characters present on the license plates.
- Integration with Database: It is required to integrate an ANPR system with a database that already has information about registered vehicles. This enhances security and efficiency while performing real-time checks based on registered number plates.
- User Interface: This is not a direct component in the ANPR system, but a good user interface is reuired in order to access complete data. Making it easy for operators to generate different types of reports based on date and time, alerts, and issues.
Applications of ANPR
Many industries and sectors make use of ANPR systems as they help to ease the tedious processes of identifying automobiles. Below are some of the most common applications of these systems:
- Law Enforcement: At this time, ANPR is most widely applied for enforcement actions by law-enforcing authorities. It is used by police to track stolen cars, detect vehicles with expired registrations, and arrest certain individuals.
- Toll Collection: In the case of toll booths, an ANPR system is integrated to facilitate toll collection. The vehicle’s license/number plates are read, and charges are applied based on the registration number. This eliminates the need for human toll collectors. One of the classic example in India, is the use of FASTag.
- Parking Management: Parking control corporations use ANPR systems to display the access and exit of motors in parking lots. This helps streamline the parking method, reduce fraud, and enhance safety by preserving a log of all motors entering the premises.
- Traffic Management:ANPR is an important system when it comes to Traffic management in smart cities. It understands different types of traffic violations and registers each one of them, making it easier for traffic authorities to penalize violators.
- Border Security: At country-wide borders, ANPR systems are employed to track automobile movements, and suspicious activities. By automating the tracking of automobiles coming into or exiting a country, border safety authorities can enhance their surveillance capabilities.
- Fleet Management: For efficient fleet management, vehicle tracking, safety & security, and route optimization are a must. An ANPR system offers all of this to fleet managers with automatic toll payments, compliance improvisation, and reduction in fuel & operational costs.
ANPR Camera Price India
When it comes to installing an ANPR system, one of the important parameter is the price of the ANPR digital camera. Prices for ANPR cameras can vary depending on the manufacturer (vendor), functions, and specifications.
In India, the value of an ANPR camera system usually ranges from INR 25,000 to INR 80,000 or more, depending on factors like:
- Resolution: High-resolution cameras tend to be more expensive.
- Infrared Capability: Cameras equipped with infrared for night vision generally come at a top class.
- Durability: Outdoor ANPR cameras with climate-resistant capabilities cost more than indoor cameras.
Finally, you need to understand that setting up an ANPR system also involves the cost of software, database setup, and maintenance. But it helps keep places safe, manage traffic better, and improves efficiency in the long run, making it worth the investment.
Conclusion
he ANPR technology has changed the way vehicles are identified and tracked. Helping law enforcement agencies, toll authorities, parking management agencies, and city traffic control authorities. All of this collectively to make cities safer and smarter.
ANPR cameras read license plates accurately and are worth the investment.
With the rise of smart city innovations, and governments taking actions towards that path, ANPR will become a bigger part of our daily life, helping our cities stay safe secure, and efficient in terms of traffic management.