May 21, 2009

Cars Will Recognize Traffic Signs

How many times a day does someone somewhere in the world roll through an intersection marked with a stop sign just because he or she didn’t see it? And how many times a day does such an inadvertent mistake result in a fatality? Future technology might make that scenario a thing of the past. The deployment of front-windshield cameras, which are now commonly used in lane departure warning systems (LDWS), can also be used to support traffic sign recognition (TSR) systems. Cars equipped with the new systems can read signs and offer warning about their meaning to drivers or even take control of the vehicle if they sense that the driver is not responding.

While challenges exist in the practical deployment of traffic sign recognition, such as international or even state-to-state cross-border driving, market research firm Strategy Analytics predicts that TSR may become as popular as LDWS by 2020. The safety benefits are enormous. For example, sign recognition can prevent the driver from exceeding the speed limit and may also prevent driving in the wrong direction on highways, which has been a cause of fatal head-on collisions.

This year saw the first deployment of TSR on the new BMW 7 Series sedan, the Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan and the Opel Insignia sedan. By using the same image sensor currently deployed for LDWS, vehicle manufacturers could be able to offer TSR as an additional safety feature at comparatively little extra cost. Yet despite advances in software algorithms, challenges still remain because of different languages, signage conventions and measuring systems used in different auto locales around the globe.

“While such challenges exist, they are not insurmountable,” according to the author of the Strategy Analytics study on the topic, Kevin Mak. “TSR has the potential to grow on the back of LDWS, with the possibility of imposed mandates as a result of current safety research programs, such as eSafety, led by the European Commission.”