Font for registration number plates (car numbers)

The development of an integrated automated system, the purpose of which is to automate the access control mechanism based on a license plate recognition system, is a difficult and, no doubt, complex task. To solve it, as part of the qualification work for the bachelor's degree, it took me more than one month, and not one hundred cups of tea.

Today we look at the algorithm and the results of solving the local problem of creating a font in a vector format according to regulatory documentation for displaying patterns of characters in correlation recognition. At the first stage, we delve into the essence of the problem.

1 "Materiel": Registration number plate of the Russian Federation

According to GOST R  50577-93 “State Registration Vehicle Signs. Types and main sizes. Technical Requirements ”, the majority of registration marks are of the type shown in the figure below.

Fig. 1.

The standard dimensions of the registration plate are 520 × 112 mm. Character combinations on  standard license plates are identified by three letters and three digits. The above GOST R  50577-93 refers to the use of 12 letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, which have graphic analogs in the Latin alphabet: A, B, E, K, M, H, O, P, C, T, U and X. It should be noted that the letters font size smaller than numbers.

The character design is determined by the ZhR5 font according to GOST 3489.2-71 "Typographic fonts. Headset Magazine chopped. " The figure below shows the area from GOST font size for pins from 12 and above.

Fig. 2.

Before solving a problem, it is always necessary to conduct a study and determine “Have you solved this problem before me?” And “How did you solve it?”. Therefore, we move on to the next step, namely the search.

2 “Search”: Font for car numbers

The search on the Internet was short-lived, by the right request “font car number”, the corporation of goodness was pleased to announce that the font in vector is available for free download.

It is impossible to rejoice at finding “free cheese” right away, so the next step is necessary - to understand how much the resulting template will solve the problem.

3 “Applicability Analysis”: RoadNumbers. otf

It is impossible, in my opinion, to get an excellent result without a thorough analysis, so it is recommended to spend a little time, so that later frantically do not correct errors and shortcomings.

And so, the analysis showed the following:

• The font lacks a pair of characters (including the character “D”, see below)
• Font is lowercase
• Contours only PostScript (I had some problems with it)
• Incomprehensible and extra characters

Note: the letter D is used in the registration plates of vehicles of diplomatic missions and trade missions of foreign companies.

4 “Bicycle 2.0”: RoadNumbers2.0.ttf, RoadNumbers2.0.otf

As a result, work was done to optimize the font, which received the attribute “2.0”:

• The font has all 12 + 1 characters
• Uppercase and lowercase characters are filled and have the same style (provides error elimination)
• TrueType and PostScript versions
• Unused characters do not have a face (analogous to "space")

Fig. 3.

Result

As a result, we present a font that, although not ideal, but allows us to solve a global problem.

Font Name : RoadNumbers

Version : 2.003 2009

Contours : TrueType, PostScript

Download : cloud.mail.ru/public/N9yx/KykoNxzyM

Sources:

1. GOST R  50577-93 “State Registration Vehicle Signs. Types and main sizes. Technical requirements"
2. GOST 3489.2-71 "Typographic fonts. Headset Magazine chopped "
3. Wikipedia Article “Index of car numbers in Russia”