Real-time Speed Limit Traffic Sign Detection System for Robust Automotive Environments

Abstract

This paper describes a hardware-oriented algorithm and its conceptual implementation in a real-time speed limit traffic sign detection system on an automotive-oriented field-programmable gate array (FPGA). It solves the training and color dependence problems found in other research, which saw reduced recognition accuracy under unlearned conditions when color has changed. The algorithm is applicable to various platforms, such as color or grayscale cameras, high-resolution (4K) or low-resolution (VGA) cameras, and high-end or low-end FPGAs. It is also robust under various conditions, such as daytime, night time, and on rainy nights, and is adaptable to various countries’ speed limit traffic sign systems. The speed limit traffic sign candidates on each grayscale video frame are detected through two simple computational stages using global luminosity and local pixel direction. Pipeline implementation using results-sharing on overlap, application of a RAM-based shift register, and optimization of scan window sizes results in a small but highperformance implementation. The proposed system matches the processing speed requirement for a 60 fps system. The speed limit traffic sign recognition system achieves better than 98% accuracy in detection and recognition, even under difficult conditions such as rainy nights, and is implementable on the low-end, low-cost Xilinx Zynq automotive Z7020 FPGA.