Ongoing work on traffic lights: Detection and evaluation

Research in traffic light recognition (TLR) has stagnated compared to related computer vision areas, such as pedestrian detection and and traffic sign recognition. We focus on the detection sub-problem, since this is the most challenging problem and solving this is the key to a successful TLR system. This is done by looking at four detectors from different author groups and their reported results. From surveying existing work it is clear that currently evaluation is limited primarily to small local datasets. In order to provide a common basis for future comparison of TLR research an extensive public database is collected based on footage from US roads. The database consists of continuous test and training video sequences, totaling 46,418 frames and 112,971 annotated traffic lights. The sequences are captured by a stereo camera mounted on the roof of a vehicle driving under both night and day conditions with varying light and weather.