ANPR software for parking, tolling and vehicle access

ANPR software reads a vehicle's number plate from a camera image, converts it into text, and uses that text as the vehicle's identity. It replaces whatever a site would otherwise issue — a ticket, a keycard, a fob, a paper permit or a toll transponder — with something the vehicle already carries.

Beyond the read itself, a full platform applies the site's rules to that plate: permits, group quotas, blacklists, time windows, tariffs and bookings, and then decides what happens at the barrier or on the invoice.

There is none. They are two names for the same technology. ANPR — Automatic Number Plate Recognition — is the term used in the UK and most of Europe. ALPR, Automatic License Plate Recognition, and the shorter LPR are the American equivalents. Vendors, tenders and datasheets use them interchangeably.

Anywhere a vehicle needs to be identified without stopping it. The common business cases are parking operations, city and municipal parking, office and business park parking, gated residential and private sites, industrial and port access, campsites and RV parks, event and racetrack entry, ticketless paid parking, EV charging, free-flow toll roads and bridges, ferry terminal boarding, and marina gate access with berth utility billing.

The recognition layer is identical in all of them. What differs is the rule applied afterwards — open a barrier, start a paid session, match a booking, charge a toll, or raise an invoice line.

Yes, and free-flow is the normal design for tolling. The plate is read at road speed, matched to a registered account or to an unregistered-user payment process, and billed without the vehicle slowing down. Cross-border traffic is handled by holding neighbouring countries' plate formats alongside the local standard, so a foreign vehicle is not treated as an anomaly.

Yes. Ferry decks are sold by vehicle length and by sailing, so the terminal has to know which vehicle has arrived and against which booking before it boards. Reading the plate in the marshalling lane matches the vehicle to its booking without a clerk checking paperwork through a car window, and the same record drives boarding and billing.

Yes, and they are usually the same project. Plate recognition handles the land-side gate for berth holders, while the same platform meters and bills electricity and water at the pedestal, prepaid or pay-per-use. The transaction fee is carried by the end user rather than the marina, and the marina holds the payment contract.

Yes, and the gate is often the main reason to install it: arrivals happen at any hour and staffing a barrier around the clock is not realistic. Bookings match to plates so guests drive straight in, long stays and seasonal pitches run on the same permits, and the pitch fee and the gate work from one record.

In almost all cases, and it is usually the cheapest way to upgrade a site. Autlo drives the barrier physically rather than through the manufacturer's controller: a relay sends an opening impulse into the gate's own sequence and the gate's induction loops handle the close. Where an older gate has no loop logic, a controller reads the loops and manages the lowering itself.

For cameras there are two routes — the camera's own API where it already recognises plates, or its H.264 video stream over RTSP where it does not.

Autlo runs in production with Hikvision over ISAPI and RTSP, and with Tattile over its direct API. Survision is confirmed compatible over its HTTP/CGI API, and Milesight's open API is a straightforward addition when a project calls for it.

Beyond those, the requirement is a standard RTSP or HTTP video stream rather than a particular model, and older analogue cameras can be brought in through an encoder. If your hardware has an open API and is not listed, contact us and we will look at adding it.

Yes for the gate itself. Because Autlo drives barriers physically rather than through the vendor's controller, the brand on the housing is rarely the obstacle — this has included SKIDATA gates. SKIDATA ANPR cameras also connect as a one-way plate-read stream over the vendor API.

Payment machines are the exception. Flowbird and some others connect; SKIDATA's payment side is closed, so on those sites payment is normally replaced rather than integrated.

Yes. With Autlo Park or Autlo Operator on top of the gate, a recognised plate opens a paid session on arrival and closes it on exit, priced on the site's tariff and either charged to the driver or rolled into a monthly invoice for a tenant or employer. Because the gate and the billing use the same records, there is no reconciliation step between access and revenue.

Yes — this is overflow management. A group can register more plates than it holds spaces, which is the normal situation when staff share cars or swap shifts. When one too many arrives you decide what the gate does: hold the barrier, admit the vehicle and charge for the extra space, or open normally and notify the administrator.

Access control that only checks whether a plate is on a list cannot do this, because it has no concept of how many vehicles from a group are currently inside.

Yes. Plate, result, reason and timestamp can be pushed to a third-party system over REST or webhook, including access granted and denied events, so an HR, security, ERP or facility database stays the single source of truth. See API integrations.

A plate a person could read from the camera image is one the software resolves, including personalised, curved, two-row and screw-obscured plates. What limits accuracy is physical rather than algorithmic — heavy snow, low sun, water on the lens, or a plate hidden behind a bike rack — and those defeat the human eye too.

Sites are therefore designed with fallbacks: front and rear cameras, the Autlo app for drivers, remote opening from the helpdesk, and a manual rule for any vehicle that is persistently misread. How ANPR works covers all of this in detail.

All Autlo servers are in the EU and GDPR compliant, with the main server in the Netherlands. Where data needs to stay closer to home, your cloud can be set up on a server in your own country or region, and the recognition server can sit on site, in Autlo's office, or in yours, including a fully local installation. Images and recognition results are deleted automatically after four months.

Every camera is monitored for availability. If a recognition server fails, another machine takes over automatically within a few seconds, and the gate can still be opened from the app or by the helpdesk in the meantime.

No. Equipment supplied by Autlo carries a two-year warranty, and repairs after that are charged at the hourly rate. New versions with added functionality are offered to existing customers at a discounted rate, and the version you already have keeps working for as long as the hardware lasts.