Automatic License Plate Recognition for Toll Tax Collection using GPS: A low-cost IoT Approach

In this work, a GPS-based Toll Tax system is introduced, utilizing cutting-edge technologies like YOLO11n model for license plate detection and EasyOCR for license plate character recognition. It is done to find a better way to manage traffic congestion and fair collection of toll tax at the toll gates by removing the use of FASTags and implementing Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) as an alternative. The toll tax is deducted based on the distance traveled by the vehicle. In our proposed system, there are two experimental locations as toll gates where we have used an ESP32-CAM module with a PIR sensor, whenever a vehicle approaches the toll gate the PIR sensor will detect the motion, triggering the ESP32-CAM module to click the picture of the vehicle. After that, we apply the YOLO11n model to detect the license plate and use EasyOCR to extract the text of the license plate to know the owner’s information and charge the appropriate toll tax. NEO6M GPS module integrated with ESP8266 has been used to get the location of the vehicle(in latitude and longitude) when it passes through a toll gate, which is then converted to kilo-meters using the Haversine formula. An SMS alert of the toll amount is sent to the registered mobile number using the SIM900A GSM module.