Digital spy to track stolen cars

Delhi Police plan vehicle-mounted number plate reading system

In a first-of-its-kind experiment by the Delhi Police, the South district will soon get a vehicle-mounted automatic number plate reading system (ANPR) to track stolen cars.

At present, cameras with ANPR capacity in the city are either stationary, or used to identify traffic violators. The tender for the new initiative was issued on April 29.

Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police II (South) Sanjay Bhatia, who came up with the idea, told

The Hindu that since stolen vehicle reports are being registered online, the ANPR facility will enable the police to scan vehicles using the digitised data. In its pilot phase, the system will have five police vehicles mounted with ANPRs, whose feed will be linked to a control room. The ANPR cameras will convert licence plate images to alphanumeric characters, or send the details to servers where this image-to-text conversion happens.

“The advantage of mounting it on vehicles will be mobility. We intend to take these vehicles to streets and parking lots. ,” said Mr. Bhatia.

In the tender, the police have sought a mechanism that allows for feeding of inputs — such as details of licence plates — and then sorting it according to certain categories that can help detect thefts. Pre-defined categories mentioned in the tender are “wanted”, “suspicious” and “stolen”.

Once a car is found to be falling in one of the listed categories, the system will be expected to generate alarms to alert the control room. The system is also required to be equipped with advanced and smart searching facility of licence plates from the database, along with the option of searching for number plates “almost” matching the specified number, says the tender.

“The feed will make it easier for us to zero in on those who drive cars that are stolen or those that are bought from thieves. We will lay traps accordingly and nab them,” said Mr. Bhatia.

Going hi-tech

Proposed system is expected to read and process number plates of vehicles with speeds up to 120 km/hr and above

Store image of vehicle and enter licence plate number into database, along with date time stamp and location

Be equipped with infra-red feature and night vision

Communicate with command room to get ownership details from portals like VAHAN

Generate alert for vehicles under specified categories