Need advice for OCR software project.

[intenseza]

Hey Guys

I have to decide on a project for my final year of Comp Sci. Currently I'm quite set on a project that requires a system to count cars as they enter and exit the University. The system should track the number plate using a video feed, as well as be able to determine the colour of the car and the number of people in it.

I've been scouting around the net for reasonable open source ANPR software, however what I've found isn't completely accurate. What are your thoughts on this? How difficult a task am I looking at here?

The front end/gui will be Android based and on a tablet as far as I decide and where I want to go with it. I think the major obsticle here is to be able to extract the neccessary information here from the video feed and have to exported and made available for database operations etc.

Any thoughts would be great.

I am completely new to OCR mind you, but I have a 3rd year background of Java and programming. I do realize that OCR is very neural network based too, and I'm a total noob with that.

Cheers

[Art Vandelay]

Wow, my guess is that would be a very ambitious project. Insanely ambitious even. For a start, having the appropriate video equipment that handles all weather conditions, software that is able to automatically count entry and exit across a field of depth, as well as discriminating people from shadows and counting them at various car speeds, etc, and being able to distinguish colours in various weather conditions, as well as being able to handle reading licence plates. Wow, I did a PhD that involved less!

[SurfMan]

Did you check out this project? JavaANPR - Automatic number plate recognition system