Patent ID: 8447112

Claim:
A method for determining a confidence level to be used in identifying a vehicle comprising: receiving, by a processing device, at least one vehicle image; determining, by the processing device, a license plate number, wherein the license plate number comprises a plurality of characters; determining, by the processing device, a confidence score for each of the plurality of characters, thereby resulting in a plurality of confidence scores for the vehicle image; determining, by the processing device, an associated confidence level based upon the at least one vehicle image and the confidence score for each of the plurality of characters; extracting, by the processing device, auxiliary data from the at least one vehicle image, wherein the auxiliary data comprises information related to physical details of the vehicle; corresponding, by the processing device, the extracted auxiliary data and a set of stored auxiliary data; and updating, by the processing device, the associated confidence level by updating the confidence score for each of the plurality of characters to produce an updated confidence level based upon the correspondence of the extracted auxiliary data and the set of stored auxiliary data, wherein the extracted auxiliary data and the plurality of confidence scores each comprise an associated weight, and wherein the extracted auxiliary data comprises a higher associated weight than the plurality of confidence scores if the vehicle image comprises a high likelihood of being inaccurate due to various conditions during image acquisition.