Smart AI-Based Vehicular Emission Monitoring and Regulatory Notification System Using YOLOv8, OCR and Machine Learning

Abstract: Urban air quality is highly influenced by how transportation contributes to air pollution, resulting in decreased quality of the environment and impaired health of individuals. Current vehicle emission tracking methods (such as inspection for certificate of pollution under control) employ time-based checks and provide no ongoing method of determining if pollution is being produced by vehicles. We propose a smart AI-based vehicle emissions monitoring and regulatory notification system that continuously monitors where, when, and how much pollutants have been released by each vehicle using IoT sensors, machine learning, license plate detection powered by YOLOv8, and optical character recognition (OCR) technologies. The operational model of our system is to compare collected data to maximum allowable vehicle emissions in accordance with regulatory limits. Random forest classifier will provide analysis of the sensor data to enhance predictive capabilities related to emissions generated by vehicles. Once an emission exceeds its regulatory limit, YOLOv8 (i.e., the AI License Plate Reader) will identify the vehicle's license plate and OCR will read the vehicle's registration number. The extracted vehicle details will be matched against a vehicle registration database and the appropriate regulatory body will be automatically notified regarding the offending vehicle. As a result, our system will support timely identification of vehicles not in compliance with regulations through proximity to their registration and to facilitate automatic compliance enforcement with minimal manual effort while providing high detection accuracy 96.4%, precision 95.8%, short response time, and reliable operational performance in diverse environmental conditions; Additionally, it will have the scalability to improve pollution control as well as to effectively manage traffic through intelligent operations in smart cities.

Keywords: Vehicle Emissions Monitoring, YOLOv8, OCR, Random Forest, IoT, Smart Cities, Regulatory Notification.