When do we use this?
Fuzzy search is used by all of our clients using handhelds, the Admin Side LPR Capture Log, and Vehicle Plate Search. We use this functionality in order to reduce the margin of error on our plate reads, making OperationsCommander a more reliable service for our clients.
Background
The OperationsCommander system has the ability for the system to map plates to new values. In layman's terms this means that this process of filtration can take an image of a plate and find many possibilities of what the plate may be matched to based on commonly misconstrued characters and the license plates registered or in the known area database. An example of this may be a plate that is read by LPR may be read as ABC128 when the plate is actually ABC123.
The user is able to make this update and store the details. This can be problematic for the user if the plate is never seen again and 8's are regularly interpreted as 3's
Update
This issue in the functionality of the LPR software is addressed by the use of the above methods and the use of the lookup table implemented to match which characters are easily misconstrued. The lookup table that follows is comprised of data from past LPR updates by users;
| Characters | Similar Characters | Characters | Similar Characters |
| 1 | "1I" | K | "HKR" |
| 2 | "2Z" | M | "HKM" |
| 3 | "38B" | O | "0DOQ" |
| 5 | "5S" | P | "FP" |
| 8 | "38B" | Q | "0DOQ" |
| B | "38B" | R | "HKR" |
| D | "0DOQ" | T | "TY" |
| E | "EF" | V | "VY" |
| F | "EFP" | Y | "VTY" |
| H | "HKMR" | Z | "2Z" |
| I | "1I" |
Handheld Example
This system can be displayed on the handheld's everyday usage this is shown in the example below;
- Navigate to the 'Search Vehicles' menu on the main menu screen.
- This will bring you to this search bar and type in the license plate number that you are looking for. For this example we are using the license plate number AFVK663.
- Since we have looked up AFVK663 the Handheld will match you with the registered vehicle APVK668. It does this because in coherence with the lookup table the character 3 is similar to the number 8 and F is similar to the character V therefore fixing the license plate error by finding a plate in the database that matches.
Application on Admin Side
The aforementioned example is not the only field in which the fuzzy filtration system is applied. It is also shown in any form of license plate search that is on the admin side as well as the license plate reader's capture log. For the extent of this example we will be looking for license plate ABC128 in the Licence Plate Recognition (LPR) Capture Log although this method will work for any license plate search.
- Navigate to the Licence Plate Recognition (LPR) Capture Log by clicking view LPR events under the License Plate Recognition sub-header in the Parking Management tab.
- This will bring you to the Licence Plate Recognition (LPR) Capture Log which is where you can search for your chosen license plate. In this scenario we will search our license plate ABC128 with the 'Fuzzy Search' prompt toggled off. Expected Result: No License Plates Found.
- Now if we repeat this search with the 'Fuzzy Search' toggled on the results are vastly different with there being many License Plate Captures for the registered vehicle with license plate ABC123 which is what we want. It does this by referencing the previously provided lookup table and repeating license plate searches for each variation of the license plate's similar characters and by doing so it corrects any errors in the LPR reads.
