Automated Indonesian Plate Recognition: YOLOv8 Detection and TensorFlow-CNN Character Classification

The precise identification and reading of Indonesian vehicle number plates are important in many areas, including the enforcement of law, collection of charges, management of parking areas, and safety measures. This study integrates the implementation of the YOLOv8 object detection algorithm with three OCR methods: EasyOCR, TesseractOCR, and TensorFlow. YOLOv8 is capable of identifying license plates from images and videos at a high speed and reliability under different conditions and therefore is used in this study to perform plate detection in images and videos. After licenses are detected, OCR techniques are performed to segment and read the letters. Both EasyOCR and TesseractOCR performed moderately well on static images achieving accuracy rates of 70% and 68% respectively, but both suffered significantly lower performance in video scenarios. Of the 100 video frames, EasyOCR was able to correctly identify characters in 61 frames and TesseractOCR in 58 frames, while the TensorFlow-based model outperformed the other two with 75 correct recognitions. Furthermore, easy OCR and static images as input while the TensorFlow-based models completed them with 100% accuracy. This observation can be explained by its design, which utilizes a CNN with ReLU activation and Softmax outputs, trained on 10,261 annotated characters and was enhanced with five different data augmentation techniques. The model shows strong performance in its ability to handle dynamic conditions such as motion blur, changing light conditions, and rotation of the plate angle. The results underscore the drawbacks of one-size-fits-all OCR applications in real-world use cases and stress the need for bespoke model training, as well as hierarchical contouring, in the context of automatic license plate recognition (ALPR). This study provides additional insights into ALPR systems by delivering a robust, scalable, and real-time tool for plate and character recognition, which is essential for intelligent transportation systems.