Features of national pattern recognition

“When I hear about pattern recognition, I never ask if the algorithms are good or bad there. I only ask if they distinguish a motorcycle from a tractor. ” ©

Once on a motorcycle, I could not imagine how much this would change my interests and quality of life, but, with the start of the season, I almost completely fell out of my usual surroundings. However, IT is around us, even in a purely technical field such as riding a motorcycle. And, as far as KDPV can be judged, it’s not “any motorcycle is better if it is with Bluetooth and Arduino”. However, my season is over, the motorcycle has been put on wintering and hands have finally reached the final processing of this note.



It would seem, is it possible to confuse the off-road minivan of the Soviet system “Loaf” and the “chopper” of the cult American company? Oddly enough, but such errors happen from time to time. Therefore, having heard about the next such curiosity, I remembered about Habr and decided to look there for information about recognition of license plates. Not surprisingly, a lot of interesting things were found, a series of apelsyn articles, several publications by ZlodeiBaal and Vasyutka - developers from the CV and ML problem solving team , including the article Did the machine learning bubble burst, or the beginning of a new dawn . In fairness, it’s not about autonomy, this topic is mentioned in passing, just for example. It is about big data and neural networks, but my opinion was hooked on the “license plate recognition” in Habr's search results, and judging by the above, there are no more blank spots and unresolved problems in this area. But how do these technologies work in conditions of Russian reality?

The story of the loaf on KDPV

“See Harley? But he is ... " ©

Information taken from Baypost . The case, at first glance, is comical but alas - not unique.



The numbers of vehicles belonging to the armed forces are specially made so that they can not be confused with civilians, especially motorcycle ones. Colors are directly opposite, shape is an elongated horizontal rectangle, a number in one line, the arrangement of letters and numbers is also different from "civilian" ones. But. The sequence of characters and their number - coincides with the motomer. It would seem that there are still too many differences, alas ...



The military is not to blame for anything - their license plates comply with the regulations, and motorcyclists have nothing to do with it - they did not violate the rules, but, nevertheless, they are not the first to receive fines for the recklessness of soldiers. Here are photos of motorbikes driven by a storyteller from Baikpost and his wife, whose bike was fined:







By the way, my wife is pregnant and did not sit on a motorcycle this season at all.



The most “funny” thing that a husband’s motorcycle also found was a “military double”:







The only hope is that "He will be brutal than a loaf and, I hope, does not drive so boldly ..." .

Tractor case

Incidents when the system confuses a military number with a civil motorcycle are not so rare, but there are even more ridiculous incidents. For example - they confuse a motorcycle with ... a tractor!



At the Motoforum there is the topic Aliens numbers about this story. The victim of the license plate recognition system received a fine for parking on the lawn:











But here is the problem, this is his motorcycle and he lives in a completely different area:







He does not put it on the lawn, moreover, due to technical problems, he has not yet opened the season!



At first glance, it seems that the numbers are exactly the same, but on the second - it turns out that there is no inconspicuous inscription “RUS” on the number of the violator, because this is a tractor number , not a motorcycle number. In addition to the absence of this inscription, it also differs in size:



Tractor:







Motorcycle:







The size of the photo is difficult to determine, the absence of RUS is also not very striking, but the program should understand this difference, although it is not as obvious as between the military and motorcycle.



Moreover, there are suspicions that the second B was "made " from the letter R.

Similar "art" is found on ordinary numbers, very bad motorcyclists finish their number so that the cameras read it differently and fines for their violations come to completely strangers.



The situation is not funny, because the owner of the enduro has already received 10 thousand rubles in fines for improper parking of a sly man who “hacked the system” ! Apparently, administrative violations are initiated by vigilant citizens through the Active Citizen program. This is a useful thing, it’s not good to park on the lawn, but Active Citizens do not suspect that they earn points in the program by punishing an innocent. One of the sympathizers advised to reverse the “hacking system” , register the motorcycle under a different license plate and declare the previous one lost, then it will be put on the wanted list and its “owner” will be in big trouble.



In one of the topics devoted to this problem, they cited the words of a lawyer who, in all seriousness, also advised a person to change the number of a motorcycle, for which fines have been sent for three years in a row for reckless soldiers who steer military Kamaz, each time it takes a lot of effort to appeal these fines .

"The moral of this fable is this ..."

On the one hand, algorithms for solving such problems have long been known and debugged, programmers enthusiastically talk about their own development experience and successful application in commercial projects. If you read the articles on Habré , you get the impression that such tasks have already become a boring routine:

there are fewer startups. But the production is more. Need to attach license plate recognition? There are hundreds of professionals in the market with relevant experience. You can hire and in a couple of months your employee will make the system. Or buy a finished one.

But on the other hand, there is the very “production” of which “it has become more” . There are hundreds of specialists, there are ready-made systems, but at the implementation stage, the traditional begins: “it was smooth on paper” , “buoy-buoy and in production” .



As is usually the case with government orders - systems are bought easier and cheaper, students are taken for implementation, equipment is ordered "from their own" . The budget has been mastered, the rollbacks have been paid, the checkboxes ticked, what will happen after the launch - no one cares because the system works, fines are set, and there are few motorcyclists, they won’t make a lot of noise. There is little hope that “Moscow is a small city”, and developers from Habr may be familiar with those people who are involved in the implementation and maintenance of this system, and thus, information about problems will reach those who can affect the current situation.