Automatic detection of traffic lights changes from red to green and car turn signals in order to improve urban traffic

In this paper two vision systems for urban traffic improvement are presented. In both of them information from a camera mounted on a vehicle is used. The first system automatically detects traffic lights changes from red to green and allows to start movement of the car without unnecessary delays. The second system automatically detects turn signal of a car, which is going to change the lane. This provides information to help the proper use of the late merge scheme in situations when two lanes in one direction are merged into one lane. Initial experiments indicate high efficiency of the proposed mechanisms.