Introduction

In recent years, the car industry has pushed forward large-scale research and industrial projects in Japan, the US and Europe related to the development of assisted driving technologies, thus allowing a real technology transfer from research to market. Several of these technologies are related to the problem of automatic traffic sign recognition, which has reached a certain level of maturity from a scientific point of view. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the most advanced cars have been equipped with these systems, at present, human drivers are still the main actors for ensuring safety in the traffic environment. Limitations for detecting and recognizing traffic signs can be grouped into four topics: Lighting conditions, environment clutter, sign variability, and data acquisition. In the following chapters, we will describe a full generic approach to the detection and recognition of traffic signs that cover state-of-the-art methodologies and deals with the aforementioned recognition problems.