Vision-Based Roadway Sign Recognition

In this paper, a vision-based roadway detection algorithm for an automated vehicle control system, based on roadway sign information on roads, is proposed. First, in order to detect roadway signs, the color scene image is enhanced under hue-invariance. Fuzzy logic is employed to simplify the enhanced color image into a binary image and the binary image is morphologically filtered. Then, an effective algorithm of locating signs based on binary rank order transform (BROT) is utilized to extract signs from the image. This algorithm performs better than those previously presented. Finally, the inner shapes of roadway signs with curving roadway direction information are recognized by neural networks. Experimental results show that the new detection algorithm is simple and robust, and performs well on real sign detection. The results also show that the neural networks used can exactly recognize the inner shapes of signs even for very noisy shapes.