System and method for reading license plates

• US 7,068,185 B2
• Filed: 01/28/2002
• Issued: 06/27/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 01/26/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Vertex Aerospace, LLC
• Original Assignee: Raytheon Company (Rtx Corporation)
• Inventors: Kavner, Douglas M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Hofsass, Jeffery
• Assistant Examiner(s): PHAM, LAM P
• Application Number:
  US10/058,511
• Publication Number:
  US 20020140577A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,611 Days
• Field of Search: 340/933, 340/941, 340/937, 340/928, 340/988, 348/148, 348/149, 235/384
• US Class Current: 340/933
• CPC Class Codes: G07B 15/06 Arrangements for road pricing or congestion charging of vehicles or vehicle users, e.g. automatic toll systems
• CPC Class Codes: G07B 15/063 using wireless information transmission between the vehicle and a fixed station identification of vehicles G08G
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/017 identifying vehicles G08G1/015, G08G1/054 take precedence

Abstract

A method for reading a license plate disposed on a vehicle includes determining whether a license plate image is required, automatically processing the license plate image in response to determining that the license plate image is required, providing at least one verified image, and determining whether to manually read the license plate image by matching the license plate image with the at least one verified image.

Claims

1. A system for reading a vehicle license plate comprising:

a plurality of roadside toll collectors providing a plurality of vehicle license plate images and a plurality of vehicle transactions;

at least one transaction processor coupled to the plurality of roadside toll collectors, receiving the plurality of images and transactions;

at least one video image processor coupled to the at least one transaction processor and adapted to receive the images and for providing a corresponding license plate number;

a video exception processor coupled to the at least one transaction processor and adapted to receive the images and to display the images such that the vehicle license plate is read manually; and

a toll processor coupled to the at least one transaction processor and adapted to minimize the number of manual reads.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the toll processor comprises a trip determination processor.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the roadside toll collector is coupled to at least one of:

a traffic probe reader;

a toll gateway; and

an enforcement gateway.

4. The system of claim 1 further comprising a traffic monitoring and reporting processor.

5. The system of claim 1 further comprising a real-time enforcement processor.

6. The system of claim 1 further comprising an image server.

7. The system of claim 1 wherein the video image processor comprises an OCR processor.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein the video image processor comprises an image correlation processor.

9. The system of claim 1 wherein the video exception processor comprises at least one manual plate reading workstation.