License Plate Recognition (LPR) also known by its other name “Automated Number Plate Recognition” (ANPR) is a system capable of reading vehicle tags without human intervention through the use of high speed video/image capture with supporting infrared, detection of characters within the images provided, verification of the character sequences as being those from a vehicle license plate, character recognition to convert image to text; ending up with a set of metadata that identifies an image containing a vehicle license plate and the associated decoded text of that plate.
LPR technology has been used widely among law enforcement agencies for years and has been a controversial subject among privacy advocates. With this technology now migrating to the private sector it has been a point to ensure that all the data is compliant with the Drivers Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) and statistical/analytic reporting cannot contain personally identifiable information.
With hurdles such as image plate isolation to identify where a license plate is in an image to other difficulties such as plate number layout among the different states, LPR technology is now perfected to capture the underlying data not displayed on the plates – but in the driver database.
LPR technology can be employed on physical structures such as buildings, access gates, as well as on vehicles themselves that will allow the plate data to be saved to a master database and include the geographical information of where that license plate was exactly scanned (down to the foot).