Massive integration of information technologies into all aspects of modern life caused demand for processing vehicles as conceptual resources in information systems. Because a standalone information system without any data has no sense, there was also a need to transform information about vehicles between the reality and information systems. This can be achieved by a human agent, or by special intelligent equipment which is be able to recognize vehicles by their number plates in a real environment and reflect it into conceptual resources. Because of this, various recognition techniques have been developed and number plate recognition systems are today used in various traffic and security applications, such as parking, access and border control, or tracking of stolen cars.In parking, number plates are used to calculate duration of the parking. When a vehicle enters an input gate, number plate is automatically recognized and stored in database. When a vehicle later exits the parking area through an output gate, number plate is recognized again and paired with the first-one stored in the database. The difference in time is used to calculate the parking fee. Automatic number plate recognition systems can be used in access control. For example, this technology is used in many companies to grant access only to vehicles of authorized personnel. In some countries, A.N.P.R. systems installed on country borders automatically detect and monitor border crossings. Each vehicle can be registered in a central database and compared to a black list of stolen vehicles. In traffic control, vehicles can be directed to different lanes for a better congestion control in busy urban communications during the rush hours.
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