Fast and Robust Traffic Sign Detection

This paper deals with the fast and robust detection of the traffic sign images. A new technique called geometric fragmentation is proposed to detect the red circular traffic signs. It detects the outer ellipses of the signs by combining the left and right fragments of the ellipse objects. A search based on the geometric fragmentation is used to find the ellipse fragments. This search is somewhat similar to genetic algorithm (GA) in the sense that it employs the terms of individual, population, crossover, and objective function usually used in GA. To increase the accuracy and reduce the computational time, a new objective function is introduced for evaluating the individuals. The algorithm was tested for detecting the red circular traffic signs from the real scene image. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has a higher detection rate with a lower computational cost compared with the referential genetic algorithm-based ellipse detection