Real-time traffic sign detection and recognition for in-car driver assistance systems

This paper presents a new computer vision design flow for real time detection and recognition of traffic signs. Autonomous traffic sign detection can play a crucial role in many applications related to transportation safety and geographical information systems. The challenges that need to be addressed include the necessity for robust and accurate detection as well as the high computational requirements of the algorithms. Therefore, we develop a three stage algorithm that is based on i) detection of traffic sign locations using HSV color space, ii) detection of traffic signs using discriminative features and iii) recognition of traffic signs using interest point descriptors. The results show a robust detection and recognition performance for multiple signs and the algorithm can be executed in real-time.