An active vision system for real-time traffic sign recognition

This paper presents an active vision system for real-time traffic sign recognition. The system is composed of two cameras, one is equipped with a wide-angle lens and the other with a telephoto-lens, and a PC with an image processing board. The system first detects candidates for traffic signs in the wide-angle image using color; intensity, and shape information. For each candidate, the telephoto-camera is directed to its predicted position to capture the candidate in a larger size in the image. The recognition algorithm is designed by intensively using built-in-functions of an off-the-shelf image processing board to realize both easy implementation and fast recognition. The results of on-road real-time experiments show the feasibility of the system.