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The incorporation of deep-learning techniques in embedded systems has enhanced the capabilities of edge computing to a great extent. However, most of these solutions rely on high-end hardware and often require a high processing capacity, which cannot be achieved with resource-constrained edge computing. This study presents a novel approach and a proof of concept for a hardware-efficient automated license plate recognition system for a constrained environment with limited resources. The proposed solution is purely implemented for low-resource edge devices and performed well for extreme illumination changes such as day and nighttime. The generalisability of the proposed models has been achieved using a novel set of neural networks for different hardware configurations based on the computational capabilities and low cost. The accuracy, energy efficiency, communication, and computational latency of the proposed models are validated using different license plate datasets in the daytime and nighttime and in real time. Meanwhile, the results obtained from the proposed study have shown competitive performance to the state-of-the-art server-grade hardware solutions as well.

The mutually beneficial blend of artificial intelligence with internet of things has been enabling many industries to develop smart information processing solutions. The implementation of technology enhanced industrial intelligence systems is challenging with the environmental conditions, resource constraints and safety concerns. With the era of smart homes and cities, domains like automated license plate recognition (ALPR) are exploring automate tasks such as traffic management and fraud detection. This paper proposes an optimized decision support solution for ALPR that works purely on edge devices at night‐time. Although ALPR is a frequently addressed research problem in the domain of intelligent systems, still they are generally computationally intensive and unable to run on edge devices with limited resources. Therefore, as a novel approach, we consider the complex aspects related to deploying lightweight yet efficient and fast ALPR models on embedded devices. The usability of the proposed models is assessed in real‐world with a proof‐of‐concept hardware design and achieved competitive results to the state‐of‐the‐art ALPR solutions that run on server‐grade hardware with intensive resources.