Estimation of traffic sign visibility toward smart driver assistance

We propose a visibility estimation method for traffic signs as part of work for realization of nuisance-free driving safety support systems. Recently, the number of driving safety support systems in a car has been increasing. As a result, it is becoming important to select appropriate information from them for safe and comfortable driving because too much information may cause driver distraction and may increase the risk of a traffic accident. One of the approaches to avoid such a problem is to alert the driver only with information which could easily be missed. Therefore, to realize such a system, we focus on estimating the visibility of traffic signs. The proposed method is a model-based method that estimates the visibility of traffic signs focusing on the difference of image features between a traffic sign and its surrounding region. In this paper, we investigate the performance of the proposed method and show its effectiveness.