Real-time GPU based road sign detection and classification

Abstract

This paper presents a system for detecting and classifying road signs from video sequences in real time. A model-based approach is used in which a prototype of the sign to be detected is transformed and matched to the image using evolutionary techniques. Then, the sign detected in the previous phase is classified by a neural network. Our system makes extensive use of the parallel computing capabilities offered by modern graphics cards and the CUDA architecture for both detection and classification. We compare detection results achieved by GPU-based parallel versions of Differential Evolution and Particle Swarm Optimization, and classification results obtained by Learning Vector Quantization and Multi-layer Perceptron. The method was tested over two real sequences taken from a camera mounted on-board a car and was able to correctly detect and classify around 70% of the signs at 17.5 fps, a similar result in shorter time, compared to the best results obtained on the same sequences so far. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.