Skip to main content
Log in

An overview of traffic sign detection and classification methods

  • Trends and Surveys
  • Published:
International Journal of Multimedia Information Retrieval Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Over the last few years, different traffic sign recognition systems were proposed. The present paper introduces an overview of some recent and efficient methods in the traffic sign detection and classification. Indeed, the main goal of detection methods is localizing regions of interest containing traffic sign, and we divide detection methods into three main categories: color-based (classified according to the color space), shape-based, and learning-based methods (including deep learning). In addition, we also divide classification methods into two categories: learning methods based on hand-crafted features (HOG, LBP, SIFT, SURF, BRISK) and deep learning methods. For easy reference, the different detection and classification methods are summarized in tables along with the different datasets. Furthermore, future research directions and recommendations are given in order to boost TSR’s performance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Gudigar A, Chokkadi S, Raghavendra U (2016) A review on automatic detection and recognition of traffic sign. Multimed Tools Appl 75(1):333–364

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Fu MY, Huang YS (2010) A survey of traffic sign recognition. In: International conference on wavelet analysis and pattern recognition (ICWAPR), 2010, IEEE, pp 119–124

  3. Wali SB, Hannan MA, Hussain A, Samad SA (2015) Comparative survey on traffic sign detection and recognition: a review. Przegld Elektrotechniczny, ISSN: 0033-2097

  4. Escalera S, Bar X, Pujol O, Vitri J, Radeva P (2011) Background on traffic sign detection and recognition. In: Traffic-sign recognition systems. Springer, London, pp 5–13

  5. De La Escalera A, Moreno LE, Salichs MA, Armingol JM (1997) Road traffic sign detection and classification. IEEE Trans Indus Electron 44(6):848–859

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Benallal M, Meunier J (2003) Real-time color segmentation of road signs. In: Canadian conference on electrical and computer engineering, vol 3, 2003, IEEE CCECE 2003, IEEE, pp 1823–1826

  7. Ruta A, Li Y, Liu X (2010) Real-time traffic sign recognition from video by class-specific discriminative features. Pattern Recogn 43(1):416–430

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  8. Ruta A, Porikli F, Watanabe S, Li Y (2011) In-vehicle camera traffic sign detection and recognition. Mach Vis Appl 22(2):359–375

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Lim KH, Ang LM, Seng KP (2009) New hybrid technique for traffic sign recognition. In: International symposium on intelligent signal processing and communications systems, 2008. ISPACS 2008, IEEE, pp 1–4

  10. Itti L, Koch C, Niebur E (1998) A model of saliency-based visual attention for rapid scene analysis. IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell 20(11):1254–1259

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Behloul A, Saadna Y (2014) A Fast and Robust Traffic Sign Recognition. Int J Innov Appl Stud 5(2):139

    Google Scholar 

  12. Yakimov P (2015) Traffic signs detection using tracking with prediction. In: International conference on E-business and telecommunications Colmar, France, Springer, pp 454–467

  13. Yakimov PY (2015) Preprocessing digital images for quickly and reliably detecting road signs. Pattern Recogn Image Anal 25(4):729–732

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Wang G, Ren G, Jiang L, Quan T (2014) Hole-based traffic sign detection method for traffic signs with red rim. Vis Comput 30(5):539–551

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Mogelmose A, Trivedi MM, Moeslund TB (2012) Vision-based traffic sign detection and analysis for intelligent driver assistance systems: Perspectives and survey. IEEE Trans Intell Transp Syst 13(4):1484–1497

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Maldonado-Bascon S, Lafuente-Arroyo S, Gil-Jimenez P, Gomez-Moreno H, Lpez-Ferreras F (2007) Road-sign detection and recognition based on support vector machines. IEEE Trans Intell Transp Syst 8(2):264–278

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Fleyeh H (2006) Shadow and highlight invariant color segmentation algorithm for traffic signs. In: IEEE conference on cybernetics and intelligent systems, 2006, IEEE, pp 1–7

  18. Vitabile S, Pollaccia G, Pilato G, Sorbello F (2001) Road signs recognition using a dynamic pixel aggregation technique in the HSV color space. In: Proceedings of the 11th international conference on image analysis and processing, 2001, IEEE, pp 572–577

  19. De la Escalera A, Armingol JM, Mata M (2003) Traffic sign recognition and analysis for intelligent vehicles. Image Vis Comput 21(3):247–258

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Fang CY, Fuh CS, Yen PS, Cherng S, Chen SW (2004) An automatic road sign recognition system based on a computational model of human recognition processing. Comput Vis Image Underst 96(2):237–268

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Miura J, Kanda T, Nakatani S, Shirai Y (2002) An active vision system for on-line traffic sign recognition. IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Inf Syst 85(11):1784–1792

    Google Scholar 

  22. Broggi A, Cerri P, Medici P, Porta PP, Ghisio G (2007) Real time road signs recognition. In: IEEE intelligent vehicles symposium, 2007, IEEE, pp 981–986

  23. Gmez-Moreno H, Maldonado-Bascn S, Gil-Jimnez P, Lafuente-Arroyo S (2010) Goal evaluation of segmentation algorithms for traffic sign recognition. IEEE Trans Intell Transp Syst 11(4):917–930

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Liu C, Chang F, Chen Z, Liu D (2016) Fast traffic sign recognition via high-contrast region extraction and extended sparse representation. IEEE Trans Intell Transp Syst 17(1):79–92

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Hechri A, Hmida R, Mtibaa A (2015) Robust road lanes and traffic signs recognition for driver assistance system. Int J Comput Sci Eng 10(1–2):202–209

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Garcia-Garrido MA, Sotelo MA, Martin-Gorostiza E (2006) Fast traffic sign detection and recognition under changing lighting conditions. In: IEEE intelligent transportation systems conference, 2006 ITSC’06, IEEE, pp. 811–816

  27. Barnes N, Zelinsky A (2004) Real-time radial symmetry for speed sign detection. In: IEEE intelligent vehicles symposium, 2004, IEEE, pp 566–571

  28. Loy G, Barnes N (2004) Fast shape-based road sign detection for a driver assistance system. In: Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems, 2004 (IROS 2004) Vol 1, IEEE, pp 70-75

  29. Soheilian B, Arlicot A, Paparoditis N (2010) Extraction de panneaux de signalisation routire dans des images couleurs. In: Reconnaissance des Formes et Intelligence Artificielle, pp 1–8

  30. Zhang SC, Liu ZQ (2005) A robust, real-time ellipse detector. Pattern Recogn 38(2):273–287

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  31. Larsson F, Felsberg M (2011) Using Fourier descriptors and spatial models for traffic sign recognition. In: Scandinavian conference on image analysis, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 238–249

  32. Qin F, Fang B, Zhao H (2010) Traffic sign segmentation and recognition in scene images. In: Chinese conference on pattern recognition (CCPR), pp 1–5

  33. Viola P, Jones M (2001) Rapid object detection using a boosted cascade of simple features. In: Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE computer society conference on computer vision and pattern recognition, CVPR 2001, vol 1, IEEE, p I

  34. Brkic K, Pinz A, \(\check{\rm S}\)egvic S (2009) Traffic sign detection as a component of an automated traffic infrastructure inventory system. Stainz, Austria

  35. Brki K , \(\check{\rm S}\)egvi S, Kalafati Z, Sikiri I, Pinz A (2010) Generative modeling of spatio-temporal traffic sign trajectories. In: IEEE computer society conference on computer vision and pattern recognition workshops (CVPRW), 2010, IEEE, pp 25–31

  36. Brkic K (2010) An overview of traffic sign detection methods. Department of Electronics, Microelectronics, Computer and Intelligent Systems Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing Unska, 3, 10000

  37. Bar X, Escalera S, Vitri J, Pujol O, Radeva P (2009) Traffic sign recognition using evolutionary adaboost detection and forest-ECOC classification. IEEE Trans Intell Transp Syst 10(1):113–126

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Prisacariu VA, Timofte R, Zimmermann K, Reid I, Van Gool L (2010) Integrating object detection with 3d tracking towards a better driver assistance system. In: 20th International conference on pattern recognition (ICPR), 2010, IEEE, pp 3344–3347

  39. Fang CY, Chen SW, Fuh CS (2003) Road-sign detection and tracking. IEEE Trans Veh Technol 52(5):1329–1341

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Zaklouta F, Stanciulescu B (2011) Warning traffic sign recognition using a HOG-based Kd tree. In: IEEE intelligent vehicles symposium (IV), 2011. IEEE, pp 1019–1024

  41. Dalal N, Triggs B (2005) Histograms of oriented gradients for human detection. In: IEEE computer society conference on computer vision and pattern recognition, CVPR 2005, vol 1, IEEE pp 886–893

  42. Wang G, Ren G, Wu Z, Zhao Y, Jiang L (2013) A robust, coarse-to-fine traffic sign detection method. In: The 2013 international joint conference on neural networks (IJCNN), IEEE, pp 1–5

  43. Houben S, Stallkamp J, Salmen J, Schlipsing M, Igel C (2013) Detection of traffic signs in real-world images: The German Traffic Sign Detection Benchmark. In: The 2013 international joint conference on neural networks (IJCNN), IEEE, pp 1–8

  44. Houben S (2011) A single target voting scheme for traffic sign detection. In: IEEE intelligent vehicles symposium (IV), 2011, IEEE, pp 124–129

  45. Mathias M, Timofte R, Benenson R, Van Gool L (2013) Traffic sign recognitionHow far are we from the solution?. In: The 2013 international joint conference on neural networks (IJCNN), IEEE, pp 1–8

  46. Wu Y, Liu Y, Li J, Liu H, Hu X (2013) Traffic sign detection based on convolutional neural networks. In: The 2013 international joint conference on neural networks (IJCNN), pp 1–7, IEEE

  47. Liu C, Chang F, Chen Z, Li S (2013) Rapid traffic sign detection and classification using categories-first-assigned tree. J Comput Inf Syst 9(18):7461–7468

    Google Scholar 

  48. Liu C, Chang F, Chen Z (2014) Rapid multiclass traffic sign detection in high-resolution images. IEEE Trans Intell Transp Syst 15(6):2394–2403

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Timofte R, Zimmermann K, Van Gool L (2009) Multi-view traffic sign detection, recognition, and 3d localisation. In: Workshop on applications of computer vision (WACV), 2009, IEEE, pp 1–8

  50. Mogelmose A, Trivedi MM, Moeslund TB (2012) Learning to detect traffic signs: comparative evaluation of synthetic and real-world datasets. In: 21st International conference on pattern recognition (ICPR), 2012, IEEE, pp 3452–3455

  51. \(\check{\rm S}\)egvic S, Brki K, Kalafati Z, Stanisavljevi V, evrovi M, Budimir D, Dadi I (2010) A computer vision assisted geoinformation inventory for traffic infrastructure. In: 13th International IEEE conference on intelligent transportation systems (ITSC), 2010, IEEE, pp 66–73

  52. Zaklouta F, Stanciulescu, B., Hamdoun, O. (2011) Traffic sign classification using kd trees and random forests. In: The 2011 international joint conference on neural networks (IJCNN), pp 2151–2155, IEEE

  53. Stallkamp J, Schlipsing M, Salmen J, Igel C (2012) Man vs. computer: benchmarking machine learning algorithms for traffic sign recognition. Neural networks 32:323–332

    Article  Google Scholar 

  54. Sermanet P, LeCun Y (2011) Traffic sign recognition with multi-scale convolutional networks. In The 2011 international joint conference on neural networks (IJCNN), IEEE, pp 2809–2813

  55. Cirean D, Meier U, Masci J, Schmidhuber J (2011) A committee of neural networks for traffic sign classification. In: The 2011 international joint conference on neural networks (IJCNN), IEEE, pp 1918–1921

  56. CireAn D, Meier U, Masci J, Schmidhuber J (2012) Multi-column deep neural network for traffic sign classification. Neural Netw 32:333–338

    Article  Google Scholar 

  57. Zeng Y, Xu X, Fang Y, Zhao K (2015) Traffic sign recognition using extreme learning classifier with deep convolutional features. In: The 2015 international conference on intelligence science and big data engineering (IScIDE 2015), Suzhou, China

  58. Aghdam HH, Heravi EJ, Puig D (2017) A practical and highly optimized convolutional neural network for classifying traffic signs in real-time. Int J Comput Vis 122(2):246–269

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  59. Ciregan D, Meier U, Schmidhuber J (2012) Multi-column deep neural networks for image classification. In IEEE conference on computer vision and pattern recognition (CVPR), 2012, IEEE, pp 3642–3649

  60. Jin J, Fu K, Zhang C (2014) Traffic sign recognition with hinge loss trained convolutional neural networks. IEEE Trans Intell Transp Syst 15(5):1991–2000

    Article  Google Scholar 

  61. Yakimov PY (2016) Real-time road signs recognition using mobile GPU. In: CEUR workshop proceedings, vol 1638, pp 477–483

  62. Qu Y, Yang S, Wu W, Lin L (2016) Hierarchical traffic sign recognition. In: Pacific rim conference on multimedia, Springer, pp 200–209

  63. Abedin MZ, Dhar P, Deb K (2016) Traffic Sign Recognition using SURF: speeded up robust feature descriptor and artificial neural network classifier. In: 9th International conference on electrical and computer engineering (ICECE), 2016, IEEE, pp 198–201

  64. Han Y, Virupakshappa K, Oruklu E (2015) Robust traffic sign recognition with feature extraction and k-NN classification methods. In: IEEE international conference on electro/information technology (EIT), 2015, IEEE, pp 484–488

  65. Malik Z, Siddiqi I (2014) Detection and recognition of traffic signs from road scene images. In: 12th International conference on frontiers of information technology (FIT), 2014, IEEE, pp 330–335

  66. Sathish P, Bharathi D (2016) Automatic road sign detection and recognition based on SIFT feature matching algorithm. In: Proceedings of the international conference on soft computing systems. Springer India, pp 421–431

  67. Hua X, Zhua X, Lia D, Li H (2010) Traffic sign recognition using Scale invariant feature transform and SVM. In: A special joint symposium of ISPRS technical commission IV and AutoCarto in conjunction with ASPRS/CaGIS fall specialty conference November, pp 15–19

  68. Lasota M, Skoczylas M (2016) Recognition of multiple traffic signs using keypoints feature detectors. In: International conference and exposition on electrical and power engineering (EPE), 2016, IEEE, pp 535–540

  69. Chen L, Li Q, Li M, Mao Q (2011) Traffic sign detection and recognition for intelligent vehicle. In: IEEE intelligent vehicles symposium (IV), 2011, IEEE, pp 908–913

  70. Hoferlin B, Zimmermann K (2009) Towards reliable traffic sign recognition. In: IEEE Intelligent vehicles symposium, 2009, IEEE, pp 324–329

  71. Liu H, Liu Y, Sun F (2014) Traffic sign recognition using group sparse coding. Inf Sci 266:75–89

    Article  Google Scholar 

  72. He X, Dai B (2016) A new traffic signs classification approach based on local and global features extraction. In: International conference on information communication and management (ICICM), IEEE, pp 121–125

  73. Tang S, Huang LL (2013) Traffic sign recognition using complementary features. In: 2nd IAPR Asian conference on pattern recognition (ACPR), 2013, IEEE, pp 210–214

  74. Li C, Yang C (2016) The research on traffic sign recognition based on deep learning. In: 16th International symposium on communications and information technologies (ISCIT), 2016, IEEE, pp 156–161

  75. Akinlar C, Topal C (2013) EDCircles: a real-time circle detector with a false detection control. Pattern Recogn 46(3):725–740

    Article  Google Scholar 

  76. Berkaya SK, Gunduz H, Ozsen O, Akinlar C, Gunal S (2016) On circular traffic sign detection and recognition. Expert Syst Appl 48:67–75

    Article  Google Scholar 

  77. Aghdam HH, Heravi EJ, Puig D (2016) A practical approach for detection and classification of traffic signs using Convolutional Neural Networks. Robot Auton Syst 84:97–112

    Article  Google Scholar 

  78. Aghdam HH, Heravi EJ, Puig D (2016) Recognizing traffic signs using a practical deep neural network. In: Robot 2015: 2nd Iberian robotics conference, Springer, pp 399–410

  79. Maas AL, Hannun AY, Ng AY (2013) Rectifier nonlinearities improve neural network acoustic models. In: Proceedings of the ICML, vol 30, No 1

  80. Eickeler S, Valdenegro M, Werner T, Kieninger M (2016) Future computer vision algorithms for traffic sign recognition systems. In: Advanced microsystems for automotive applications 2015, Springer, pp 69–77

  81. Youssef A, Albani D, Nardi D, Bloisi DD (2016) Fast traffic sign recognition using color segmentation and deep convolutional networks. In: International conference on advanced concepts for intelligent vision systems, Springer, pp 205–216

  82. Huang Z, Yu Y, Gu J, Liu H (2016) An efficient method for traffic sign recognition based on extreme learning machine. IEEE Trans Cybern 47(4):920–933

    Article  Google Scholar 

  83. Zang D, Zhang J, Zhang D, Bao M, Cheng J, Tang K (2016) Traffic sign detection based on cascaded convolutional neural networks. In: 17th IEEE/ACIS international conference on software engineering, artificial intelligence, networking and parallel/distributed computing (SNPD), 2016, IEEE, pp 201–206

  84. Salti S, Petrelli A, Tombari F, Fioraio N, Di Stefano L (2015) Traffic sign detection via interest region extraction. Pattern Recogn 48(4):1039–1049

    Article  Google Scholar 

  85. Chen T, Lu S (2016) Accurate and efficient traffic sign detection using discriminative adaboost and support vector regression. IEEE Trans Veh Technol 65(6):4006–4015

    Article  Google Scholar 

  86. Ellahyani A, El Ansari M, El Jaafari I (2016) Traffic sign detection and recognition based on random forests. Appl Soft Comput 46:805–815

    Article  Google Scholar 

  87. Qian R, Yue Y, Coenen F, Zhang B (2016) Traffic sign recognition with convolutional neural network based on max pooling positions. In: 12th International conference on natural computation, fuzzy systems and knowledge discovery (ICNC-FSKD), 2016, IEEE, pp 578–582

  88. Xie K, Ge S, Ye Q, Luo Z (2016) Traffic sign recognition based on attribute-refinement cascaded convolutional neural networks. In: Pacific rim conference on multimedia, Springer, pp 201–210

  89. Aghdam HH, Heravi EJ, Puig D (2015) Traffic sign recognition using visual attributes and Bayesian network. In: International joint conference on computer vision, imaging and computer graphics, Springer, pp 295–315

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yassmina Saadna.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Saadna, Y., Behloul, A. An overview of traffic sign detection and classification methods. Int J Multimed Info Retr 6, 193–210 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13735-017-0129-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13735-017-0129-8

Keywords

Navigation