Development of New Anpr Dataset for Automatic Number Plate Detection and Recognition in North of Iraq

An automatic number plate detection (ANPD) and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems are robust technologies that are used for detecting and recognizing the number plates of vehicles. In this paper, a new dataset, which is called North Iraq-Vehicle Images (NI-VI) of three provinces (Duhok, Erbil, and Sulaimani) for vehicle images, is presented. There are 1500 images in this dataset. They were gathered from real-time by using handled cameras to form a realistic dataset of the vehicle images. The main contribution of this work is the creation of a new dataset for license plate of vehicles in north Iraq with Arabic fonts in different and difficult conditions. The dataset includes three categories of images: rotated, scaled and translated images. The resolutions of images are 4288 x 2848 and 5184 x 3456. Moreover, some images created for bad weather conditions, such as snowy, dusty and low lighting. Some dirty plate images also considered in the dataset. The purpose of introducing this dataset is to provide and produce a realistic dataset for ANPD and as well as for ANPR systems.

I. Introduction

In the last decade, traffic control and traffic violation have become one of the most important issues in all countries. The flow of the traffic is controlled by many cameras that are spread around the streets inside and outside of cities [1],[2]. As these cameras acquire instantaneous image of the vehicles, that are on the roads, intelligent software are needed to detect vehicles as well as their license plates. Generally, software needs training datasets for recognition of the license plates. Although of using these cameras, it is still difficult and challengeable to identify owner of the vehicle, who has violate the traffic, at the same moments using real-time application. It is very necessary to have such real-time dataset that will used to identify the vehicle owner, who has violate the traffic by driving with high speed more than the scheduled speed. Therefore, there is an urgent need to create a dataset for license plate of vehicles in each country, in order to investigate and solve the issue of ANPD and ANPR [3]-[7]. This dataset shall be used for three important purposes. First, it can be used for only vehicle number plate detection. Second, it can be used for only recognition the number plate, since There are labeled number plates in the dataset. Third, it can be used for both detection and recognition together, which means it can be used for ANPR systems.