Estimation of traffic sign visibility considering local and global features in a driving environment

This paper proposes a camera-based visibility estimation method for a traffic sign. The visibility here indicates how a visual target is easy to be detected and recognized by a human driver (not a machine). This research aims at realizing a nuisance-free driver assistance system which sorts out information depending on the visibility of a visual target, in order to prevent driver distraction. Our previous study on estimating the visibility of a traffic sign considered only the effect of the local region around a target, assuming the situation that a driver´s gaze is around it. The proposed method integrates both the local features and global features in a driving environment without such an assumption. The global features evaluate the positional relationships between traffic signs and the appearance around the fixation point of a driver´s gaze, which considers the effect of the driver´s entire field of view. Experimental results showed the effectiveness of incorporating the global features for estimating the visibility of a traffic sign.