Method to Quantify the Visibility of Traffic Signals for Driver Assistance

We propose a method to recognize the visibility of traffic signals from a driver's perspective. The more that driver assistance systems are equipped for practical use, the more information that is being provided for drivers. So each information provision system should select appropriate information based on the situation. Our goal is to realize a system that quantifies the visibility of traffic signals from images taken by in-vehicle cameras and appropriately provides information to drivers. In this paper, we propose a method to measure visibility by two criterions, detectability and discriminability. Each index is computed using image processing techniques. Experiments using actual images showed that the proposed indices correspond well to human perception.