METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR DETECTING UNINSURED MOTOR VEHICLES

• US 20160035037A1
• Filed: 07/30/2014
• Published: 02/04/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 07/30/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Conduent Business Services, LLC (Conduent, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Bulan, Orhan, Burry, Aaron M., Islam, Abu S., Paul, Peter, Jackson, David Martin Todd
• Granted Patent: US 9,704,201 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/08 Insurance
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/60 relating to illumination properties, e.g. using a reflectance or lighting model
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/63 Scene text, e.g. street names

Abstract

A video sequence can be continuously acquired at a predetermined frame rate and resolution by an image capturing unit installed at a location. A video frame can be extracted from the video sequence when a vehicle is detected at an optimal position for license plate recognition by detecting a blob corresponding to the vehicle and a virtual line on an image plane. The video frame can be pruned to eliminate a false positive and multiple frames with respect to a similar vehicle before transmitting the frame via a network. A license plate detection/localization can be performed on the extracted video frame to identify a sub-region with respect to the video frame that are most likely to contain a license plate. A license plate recognition operation can be performed and an overall confidence assigned to the license plate recognition result.

Claims

1. A method for detecting an uninsured motor vehicle, said method comprising:

continuously acquiring a video sequence at a predetermined frame rate and resolution by an image-capturing unit installed at a location to extract a video frame from said video sequence when a vehicle is detected at an optimal position for license plate recognition;

detecting/localizing said license plate on said extracted video frame to identify a sub-region with respect to said video frame that includes a license plate;

performing a license plate recognition utilizing a character level segmentation and an optical character recognition and assigning an overall confidence to a license plate recognition result; and

identifying insurance with respect to a detected vehicle from a database and thereafter automatically sending a notification/ticket to a registrant of said vehicle, if said vehicle is identified as uninsured.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising pruning said video frame to eliminate a false positive and multiple frames with respect to a similar vehicle before transmitting said video frame via a network.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising extracting said video frame by transferring a frame of interest to a central processing unit for further processing.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising extracting said video frame in said central processing unit after transferring said video sequence via a network.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining said frame rate and resolution based on requirements of a video frame triggering unit and a license plate recognition unit.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein said image capturing unit comprises an RGB image capturing unit and/or an near infra-red image capturing unit.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein detecting/localizing said license plate on said extracted video frame, further comprises:

detecting a blob corresponding to said vehicle on an image plane utilizing a background subtraction and/or a motion detection technique.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein said background subtraction, further comprises:

highlighting an object in said video sequence when a static image-capturing unit is employed to capture said video sequence;

computing an absolute intensity/color difference between a known background image and each image in said video sequence by a background removal when an image of a background without any foreground object is available; and

classifying a pixel for which a computed distance in an intensity/color space is small as a background pixel.

9. The method of claim 7 further comprising performing said motion detection by a temporal difference approach, a pixel-level optical flow approach, and/or a block-matching algorithm.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein detecting/localizing said license plate on said extracted video frame, further comprises:

computing a virtual trap to detect said vehicle at a specific position in said image capturing unit view; and

defining said trap by a virtual line, a polygon, and a plurality of virtual lines and polygons.

11. The method of claim 1 further comprising eliminating said false positive due to a cast shadow utilizing a machine learning approach and a shadow suppression technique.

12. The method of claim 1 further comprising eliminating said multiple frames with respect to a similar vehicle to meet a bandwidth requirement of said network and also to reduce a computational load required in said license plate recognition unit.

13. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

applying a shadow removal technique to remove a shadow portion of said detected vehicle blob; and

determining whether said license plate recognition result is a candidate for an automated processing and/or requires a manual validation by said confidence score.

14. The method of claim 1 further comprising obtaining said database from a department of motor vehicle and/or from an insurance company.

15. The method of claim 1 further comprising attaching said video frame extracted to said ticket as an evidence to prove that said vehicle is driving in traffic when uninsured.

16. A system for detecting an uninsured motor vehicle, said system comprising:

one or more processors; and

memory comprising instructions stored therein, which when executed by said one or more processors, cause said one or more processors to perform operations comprising;

continuously acquiring a video sequence at a predetermined frame rate and resolution by an image-capturing unit installed at a location to extract a video frame from said video sequence when a vehicle is detected at an optimal position for license plate recognition;

detecting/localizing said license plate on said extracted video frame to identify a sub-region with respect to said video frame that includes a license plate;

performing a license plate recognition utilizing a character level segmentation and an optical character recognition and assigning an overall confidence to a license plate recognition result; and

identifying insurance with respect to a detected vehicle from a database and thereafter automatically sending a notification/ticket to a registrant of said vehicle, if said vehicle is identified as uninsured.

17. The system of claim 16 wherein said operations further comprise pruning said video frame to eliminate a false positive and multiple frames with respect to a similar vehicle before transmitting said video frame via a network.

18. The system of claim 16 wherein said operations further comprise:

extracting said video frame by transferring a frame of interest to a central processing unit for further processing.

19. The system of claim 16 wherein said operations further comprise:

extracting said video frame in said central processing unit after transferring said video sequence via a network.

20. A machine-readable medium comprising instructions stored therein, which when executed by a machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:

continuously acquiring a video sequence at a predetermined frame rate and resolution by an image-capturing unit installed at a location to extract a video frame from said video sequence when a vehicle is detected at an optimal position for license plate recognition;

detecting localizing said license plate on said extracted video frame to identify a sub-region with respect to said video frame that includes a license plate;

performing a license plate recognition utilizing a character level segmentation and an optical character recognition and assigning an overall confidence to a license plate recognition result; and

identifying insurance with respect to a detected vehicle from a database and thereafter automatically sending a notification/ticket to a registrant of said vehicle, if said vehicle is identified as uninsured.