The recognition algorithm developed by the software house Vincit Ltd has been adopted by, among others, the Kuopio-based car wash Juhlapesu and the autorekisteri.fi service. 

“As the customer drives to the gate, the system recognises the licence plate and activates the car wash automatically. Using the same system, the smart phone user can find history and ownership information regarding the car, for example at car showrooms, car parks, or for cars in traffic”, says manager Pasi Kovanen at Vincit.

“Vehicle details can be searched for through the user’s downloaded autorekisteri.fi service iPhone application from Apple’s App Store. By scanning the plate, i.e. focusing the smart phone’s camera on a car of interest, the system reads the car’s licence plate and submits an enquiry on the web to the database of the Finnish Transport Safety Agency TraFi”, he explains.

Vincit was the first to bring recognition of Finnish licence plates based on the iOS operating system onto the market. The unique feature in the solution used in the iPhone smart phone application and iPad devices is that the technology achieves recognition of the licence plate in real time from a video image. The recognition takes a lot of computing power.

The recognition of the licence plates of Juhlapesu’s customers is based on dispersed application architecture that Vincit is researching in the Cloud Software programme. Through dispersed application architecture, over 90 per cent of plates are recognised locally or in a cloud before the vehicle stops.

Cloud Software Finland is a four-year programme of Digile (2010-2014), which focuses on developing various aspects of cloud services. The programme is funded by Tekes.

www.cloudsoftwareprogram.org