3 ms·

That's just ... weird. I wonder how the developers, who reasonably have spent quite a while looking at and thinking about license plates, can make such an error

by unwind 11y ago

That's just ... weird. I wonder how the developers, who reasonably have spent quite a while looking at and thinking about license plates, can make such an error. It would of course have helped if they had provided more documentation regarding what the software considers to be the differences between US and European plates that makes it able to cope with all of Europe as a single mode, but not with US' plates.

atomwaffel 11y ago
From what they write in their live demo[1], it's about the dimensions of the plate rather than what's on them: > OpenALPR supports both North American style (12 inches by 6 inches) and European style (52 cm by 11 cm) license plates. That makes a bit more sense. Then again, the "Country" field there gives a choice of North American, European, Australia, Great Britain, Singapore, Korea. I wonder if accuracy couldn't be improved quite a bit if they included heuristics for individual countries. For instance, German licence plates should be really easy to read thanks to their "forgery-impeding typeface"[2] which has uniquely distinctive features for each letter. It's also not guaranteed that all European licence plates have those dimensions. Motorcycles and tractors for instance have taller, narrower plates, and cars where regular plates wouldn't fit (like imported or antique cars) can get special plates as well. And then of course there's Switzerland which has wildly different dimensions and has changed its mind every few years[3]. [1] http://www.openalpr.com/demo-image.html http://www.openalpr.com/demo-image.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of...

3 ms·

That's just ... weird. I wonder how the developers, who reasonably have spent quite a while looking at and thinking about license plates, can make such an error

by unwind 11y ago

atomwaffel 11y ago
From what they write in their live demo[1], it's about the dimensions of the plate rather than what's on them: > OpenALPR supports both North American style (12 inches by 6 inches) and European style (52 cm by 11 cm) license plates. That makes a bit more sense. Then again, the "Country" field there gives a choice of North American, European, Australia, Great Britain, Singapore, Korea. I wonder if accuracy couldn't be improved quite a bit if they included heuristics for individual countries. For instance, German licence plates should be really easy to read thanks to their "forgery-impeding typeface"[2] which has uniquely distinctive features for each letter. It's also not guaranteed that all European licence plates have those dimensions. Motorcycles and tractors for instance have taller, narrower plates, and cars where regular plates wouldn't fit (like imported or antique cars) can get special plates as well. And then of course there's Switzerland which has wildly different dimensions and has changed its mind every few years[3]. [1] http://www.openalpr.com/demo-image.html http://www.openalpr.com/demo-image.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of...