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Smart Cars Tell You About Road Signs
Roland Piquepaille writes "There are many systems designed to help car drivers and to improve safety. In this article, New Scientist focuses on a system developed by the National ICT Australia lab (NICTA). This new driver assistance system uses three cameras, one to look at road signs ahead and two to check what the driver is looking at. The images are transmitted to a computer which decodes the road signs and the driver's reactions to them. If you're driving above speed limits, you will be alerted. Same thing if you're about to pass a stop sign without reducing speed. You still can choose to ignore the warnings, but if you're caught speeding, you'll have to tell the police officer why you refused to slow down. This system is currently being tested and appears to perform well especially in poor lighting conditions. Read more for other references about similar helping systems and to see how the road signs are analyzed."
Slashdot editors - are you actually getting paid off by "Roland Piquepaille" for this, or just tremendously vulnerable to astroturfing?
My first impression here is that this isn't the easiest way to accomplish things.
Three cameras?
Wouldn't it be easier to add RFID (or something along those lines) to the street signs and then simply allow the car to read those? Consider the cost of adding this camera-based system to just one car. Multiply that by the number of cars that end up with it, and see how far that would go toward adding chips to street signs.
I'm pretty sure I read something about this kind of project here on Slashdot.
Actually, if we have cars that drive themselves, they can be coordinated centrally to time themselves to virtually eliminate street lights and traffic jams.
Imagine the cars on the road impromptu trains, with many cars drafting each other. With humans eliminated from the system, the safe gap between cars can be shortened greatly. I would gladly give up driving to a _great_ AI to know _exactly_ when I have to leave the house to get to my destination.
Problem is, I wouldn't trust the AI until it has been tested _years_ in the field. Maybe driving freight on a specialized set of lanes.
Other problem is, that to have a true system like this, non-AI controlled cars cannot be on the road, as they will add randomness to the central control.
Deep down in his heart of hearts, I'm sure Nick knows perfectly well that trying to use computer vision to read road signs is at best a temporary hack for a legacy system. However, it's a nice application to show to wowser politicians to get them to fund his real interest - computer vision algorithms.
It's the same reason why a lot of American scientists take money from the armed forces; they're neutral at best about the application, but it's a great way to get funding.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
In places like New Zealand we can have a range of speed limits (50,60,70,80,100km/h), and some roads vary as you move through dense areas into less dense. It would be nice to have the car remember what the speed limit was. I have driven along the road, stopped at a place for a few hours, and when returning to the road couldn't remember what the speed limit for the current section was.