Vision on the Move: Automated Hazardous Material Plate Detection in Freight Transport

Melissa Tijink; Stanislav Levendeev; Ewaldo Nieuwenhuis; Luuk Spreeuwers; Nicola Strisciuglio; Estefanía Talavera

doi:10.1007/978-3-032-04968-1_22

Vision on the Move: Automated Hazardous Material Plate Detection in Freight Transport

Melissa Tijink^*
, Stanislav Levendeev
, Ewaldo Nieuwenhuis
, Luuk Spreeuwers
, Nicola Strisciuglio
, Estefanía Talavera

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

117 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Enhancing the logistic efficiency and safety of freight transport requires fast, reliable identification of hazardous materials (hazmat). In this work, we explore how computer vision can automate the detection and reading of hazmat number plates on freight trains and trucks. We benchmark two object detection models for hazmat localization, YOLOv11x and Faster R-CNN, across a private freight train dataset and HazTruck, our newly introduced public dataset. For reading the detected plates, we evaluated three Optical Character Recognition (OCR) methods: the widely used Tesseract, EasyOCR, and the recent vision-language model Idefics2. Integrating YOLOv11x and Idefics2 into a unified pipeline achieved the state-of-the-art performance, with over 90% accuracy on freight train data, showcasing a powerful and scalable solution for automated hazmat identification in transport logistics. The code and datasets are available via https://github.com/Robust-Rail.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns
Subtitle of host publication	21st International Conference, CAIP 2025, Proceedings
Editors	Modesto Castrillón-Santana, Carlos M. Travieso-González, David Freire-Obregón, Daniel Hernández-Sosa, Javier Lorenzo-Navarro, Oliverio J. Santana, Oscar Deniz Suarez
Place of Publication	Cham
Publisher	Springer
Pages	259-270
Number of pages	12
ISBN (Electronic)	978-3-032-05060-1
ISBN (Print)	978-3032049674
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-04968-1_22
Publication status	Published - 17 Sept 2025
Event	21st International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns, CAIP 2025 - Museo Elder de la Ciencia y la Tecnología, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain Duration: 22 Sept 2025 → 25 Sept 2025 Conference number: 21 https://caip2025.com/

Publication series

Name	Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Publisher	Springer
Volume	15621
ISSN (Print)	0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)	1611-3349

Conference

Conference	21st International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns, CAIP 2025
Abbreviated title	CAIP 2025
Country/Territory	Spain
City	Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Period	22/09/25 → 25/09/25
Internet address	https://caip2025.com/

Keywords

2026 OA procedure
OCR
Transport Digitalization
Hazmat recognition

Access to Document

10.1007/978-3-032-04968-1_22

978-3-032-04968-1_22Final published version, 1.34 MBLicence: Taverne

Cite this

Tijink, M., Levendeev, S., Nieuwenhuis, E., Spreeuwers, L., Strisciuglio, N., & Talavera, E. (2025). Vision on the Move: Automated Hazardous Material Plate Detection in Freight Transport. In M. Castrillón-Santana, C. M. Travieso-González, D. Freire-Obregón, D. Hernández-Sosa, J. Lorenzo-Navarro, O. J. Santana, & O. Deniz Suarez (Eds.), Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns: 21st International Conference, CAIP 2025, Proceedings (pp. 259-270). (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Vol. 15621). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-04968-1_22

Tijink, Melissa ; Levendeev, Stanislav ; Nieuwenhuis, Ewaldo et al. / Vision on the Move : Automated Hazardous Material Plate Detection in Freight Transport. Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns: 21st International Conference, CAIP 2025, Proceedings. editor / Modesto Castrillón-Santana ; Carlos M. Travieso-González ; David Freire-Obregón ; Daniel Hernández-Sosa ; Javier Lorenzo-Navarro ; Oliverio J. Santana ; Oscar Deniz Suarez. Cham : Springer, 2025. pp. 259-270 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science).

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title = "Vision on the Move: Automated Hazardous Material Plate Detection in Freight Transport",

abstract = "Enhancing the logistic efficiency and safety of freight transport requires fast, reliable identification of hazardous materials (hazmat). In this work, we explore how computer vision can automate the detection and reading of hazmat number plates on freight trains and trucks. We benchmark two object detection models for hazmat localization, YOLOv11x and Faster R-CNN, across a private freight train dataset and HazTruck, our newly introduced public dataset. For reading the detected plates, we evaluated three Optical Character Recognition (OCR) methods: the widely used Tesseract, EasyOCR, and the recent vision-language model Idefics2. Integrating YOLOv11x and Idefics2 into a unified pipeline achieved the state-of-the-art performance, with over 90\% accuracy on freight train data, showcasing a powerful and scalable solution for automated hazmat identification in transport logistics. The code and datasets are available via https://github.com/Robust-Rail.",

keywords = "2026 OA procedure, OCR, Transport Digitalization, Hazmat recognition",

author = "Melissa Tijink and Stanislav Levendeev and Ewaldo Nieuwenhuis and Luuk Spreeuwers and Nicola Strisciuglio and Estefan{\'i}a Talavera",

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Tijink, M, Levendeev, S, Nieuwenhuis, E, Spreeuwers, L , Strisciuglio, N & Talavera, E 2025, Vision on the Move: Automated Hazardous Material Plate Detection in Freight Transport. in M Castrillón-Santana, CM Travieso-González, D Freire-Obregón, D Hernández-Sosa, J Lorenzo-Navarro, OJ Santana & O Deniz Suarez (eds), Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns: 21st International Conference, CAIP 2025, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 15621, Springer, Cham, pp. 259-270, 21st International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns, CAIP 2025, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, 22/09/25. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-04968-1_22

Vision on the Move: Automated Hazardous Material Plate Detection in Freight Transport. / Tijink, Melissa; Levendeev, Stanislav; Nieuwenhuis, Ewaldo et al.
Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns: 21st International Conference, CAIP 2025, Proceedings. ed. / Modesto Castrillón-Santana; Carlos M. Travieso-González; David Freire-Obregón; Daniel Hernández-Sosa; Javier Lorenzo-Navarro; Oliverio J. Santana; Oscar Deniz Suarez. Cham: Springer, 2025. p. 259-270 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Vol. 15621).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

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Tijink M, Levendeev S, Nieuwenhuis E, Spreeuwers L , Strisciuglio N , Talavera E. Vision on the Move: Automated Hazardous Material Plate Detection in Freight Transport. In Castrillón-Santana M, Travieso-González CM, Freire-Obregón D, Hernández-Sosa D, Lorenzo-Navarro J, Santana OJ, Deniz Suarez O, editors, Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns: 21st International Conference, CAIP 2025, Proceedings. Cham: Springer. 2025. p. 259-270. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science). doi: 10.1007/978-3-032-04968-1_22