Traffic sign recognition 'most influential' innovation of past decade

The novel system, first published in a paper titled

a

"A New Approach for In-Vehicle Camera Traffic Sign Detection and Recognition" in 2009, proposed to make use of the specific characteristics of road signs to quickly identify them in any scene.

"Where most previous systems had used standard methods of image recognition, we instead focussed more on the special characteristics of the traffic signs," said Dr. Yongmin Li from Brunel University London, who co-authored the paper alongside Ph.D. researcher Andrezej Ruta.

"For example, road signs use a very small number of colours—red, blue, green, white, black and yellow—and they have regular shapes, either circle, triangle or square etcetera. There is a relatively small number of possible candidate signs."

The system effectively addresses the problem as a process of elimination—a super-speed, real-time game of 'Guess Who?' which quickly narrows in on the correct answer.

This research and its later extended work became the standard reference in its field after its publication. It's thought that the research underpins many of today's commercial in-car systems.

Whilst in 2009 traffic-sign recognition was seen as a neat feature for high-end cars, today it's taken on a new level of importance, and is now considered a key aspect in the future of autonomous and semi-autonomous cars.

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-traffic-recognition-influential-decade.html