An implementation of automatic container number recognition system

This paper presents a design and implementation of automatic container number recognition (ACNR) system for an oversea logistic purpose. Usually in import/export industry in Thailand, the container number which is used for logistic management and also customs duties is manually inspected and recorded by human at each gate of port. However, the manual operation by human causes of error and slow speed of operation from bottle neck, especially customs clearance verification process which customs officers and terminal operators must deal with containers individually as they enter and leave terminals via a gate. By these reasons, an automatic system is required. The cameras capture containers and by using image processing and optical characteristic recognition (OCR) techniques, a container number will be achieved and then customs clearance verification can be automatically checked via database system including other logistic management. The proposed ACNR system can reduce the bottle neck issue, enhance time utilization, accuracy rate, and data management efficiency. From an experiment, total samples of 218 containers are tested, the proposed system can give an accuracy rate of 95.41% with time utilization < 10 seconds per/container.