This Automated License Plate Recognition system makes short work of looking up massive numbers of license plates. I wonder if there is a system that will make the plate appear fine while looking at it but cause a mis-read when read in using the camera system?

“Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology is made up of several elements.

Platefinder – Sophisticated firmware continually searches the camera’s field of view for the presence of a license plate.

Dual Lens Camera – As a license plate is detected, the dual lens camera is triggered to capture both color and infrared images of the vehicle and plate. Infrared cameras are able to see license plates regardless of sun glare, darkness, or other adverse conditions.
Triple Flash

“Triple Flash” patented feature captures multiple images”

Triple Flash Technology – This patented technology varies the flash, shutter and gain settings of the camera to capture multiple plate images, ensuring the highest quality photo regardless of light or weather conditions. Only the image determined to produce the highest quality read is sent on for processing.

Optical Character Recognition “Engine” – Unlike some players in the ALPR community, PIPS does not use generic OCR engine for all states and regions. PIPS uses a customized OCR engine specific to the state or region of interest. PIPS OCR engines are very tolerant of skewed and off-axis plate reads, various plate sizes, syntax rules, and designs. The engine reads the captured infrared plate image and converts it to a data file.

Processors – In addition to housing the patented platefinder and triple flash technologies, PIPS processors perform the OCR translation and can use the captured data in a variety of ways via a PIPS software application or 3rd party solution.

Application Software– Software interfaces, specific to the industry or application, allow the user of the system to easily view and manage the data.”