In-Vehicle Augmented Reality Traffic Information System: A New Type of Communication Between Driver and Vehicle

In order to improve driving safety and minimize driving workload, the information provided should be represented in such a way that it is more easily understood and imposing less cognitive load onto the driver. Augmented Reality Head-up Display (AR-HUD) can facilitate a new form of dialogue between the vehicle and the driver; and enhance intelligent transportation systems by superimposing surrounding traffic information on the users view and keep drivers view on roads. In this paper, we investigated the potential costs and benefits of using AR cues to improve driving safety as new form of dialog between the vehicle and the driver. We present a new approach for marker-less AR Traffics Signs Recognition system that superimposes augmented virtual objects onto a real scene under all types of driving situations, including unfavorable weather conditions. Our method uses two steps: hypothesis generation and hypothesis verification. In the first step, Region Of Interest (ROI) is extracted using a scanning window with Haar cascade detector and AdaBoost classifier to reduce the computational region in the hypothesis generation step. The second step verifies whether a given candidate and classified into vehicle and non-vehicle classes using edge information and symmetry measurement to verify them. We employ this approach to improve the accuracy of AR traffic information system to assist the driver in various driving situations, increase the driving comfort and reduce traffic accidents. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.