Abstract: A new method for character segmentation is given depending on the concomitant and complementary color features in the license plate area. The character color areas and background color areas are directly extracted from the original image of the license plate area. This was finished by binary process. By these methods, the errors arising during the image processing can be avoided, and lessen the noise made. Finally, the characters are segmented by the vertical projection method. The experiments on 200 automobile real RGB color images, which are taken under various conditions from traffic stations, show high accuracy. Robustness, practicability and lower sensitivity to the effects of plate disrepair, dirt, rivet and characters juncture can be obtained.

Key words: concomitant, complement, color feature , vehicle license plate character segmentation