Embedded system for road sign detection using MicroBlaze

In this paper, we present implementation of road sign detection application in an embedded real time system. The target hardware is a Xilinx MicroBlaze soft-processor. The algorithm is described using C language and compiled with the SDK and EDK tools targeting the VirtexML605 FPGA. The input video is a real scene acquired by a digital camera with resolution of 480×640 pixels. Adequate architecture generated of the MicroBlaze with adequate communication with the system memory, allows real time execution of the application. Experimental results on synthetic and real data show that our implementation successfully runs in real time with a low occupation of resources, while maintaining comparable functionality to version existing solutions based on FPGA. The proposed hardware platform is faster compared to existing solutions based DSP.