To improve the monitoring of sand transportation and in an effort to curb illegal mining and transportation, the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIITH) has developed a solution equipped to solve the problem of identifying trucks with non-standard license plates.
Vahan Eye, according to IIITH, was developed after the IT department approached them seeking a system for the Telangana Mineral Development Corporation (TGMDC) that would automatically recognize license plates. The required system would have to be reliable but also cost effective.
While standard license plates are easy to identify, given that many trucks have hand-painted license plates or plates that vary widely in font and font size, it has been a challenge for the system to recognize such license plates. Commercially available license plate recognition systems on the market were expensive, according to IIIT-H.
With these requirements, IIIT-H adjunct faculty member Verra Ganesh Yalla, who is also an adjunct faculty, and his team took previous research done by IIIT-H’s Visual Information Technology Center and worked on it. His team then developed methods to implement it by working on an already existing license plate recognition system. The team analyzed the workflow and improved the handwriting recognition system to make it more reliable.
What sets their work apart is that they have integrated analytics as a plug-in into an open source platform.
As part of their pilot project, the Vahan Eye was used along the Vijayawada-Hyderabad highway in Chityal. The IIIT-H team has implemented systems here including installation of cameras. They then used the Vahan Eye system to track trucks entering Telangana and cross-check them against a list containing details of 40,000 approved trucks. The team then made modifications to meet TGMDC requirements.
Since September last year, the system has been operating without interruption. Despite difficulties such as poor lighting at night and festival decorations such as garlands obscuring license plates, the algorithm performed reliably and is constantly improving as it processes live data.
In September, TGMDC announced its intention to call for tenders for the solution. The move was in line with the state’s sand mining policy, which seeks to ensure transparent sale and properly regulated transport of sand. While vehicles transporting sand from quarries to storage are tracked using GPS, the new ANPR system is designed to bring checks by scanning license plates of passing vehicles, including those transporting sand.
Published – 17 Feb 2026 20:34 IST