US 2,005,232,469 · Filed 2005-04-14
The Patent That Teaches Cars to Read Road Signs
Imagine your car could actually see and understand street signs the way you do — speed limits, stop signs, yield signs, and more. This patent describes a camera mounted on the front of a vehicle that snaps pictures of the road ahead, then uses special software to recognize what sign it's looking at and read the numbers or letters on it.
The plain-English version
What it protects
The claim covers a camera system installed on a vehicle paired with software that performs two key tasks: first, it detects whether something in the road ahead is actually a sign (sign recognition), and second, once it knows it's a sign, it reads and interprets the text or symbols on that sign (character recognition). What's protected here is the combination of the hardware setup, the algorithm that identifies sign types, and the secondary routine that extracts readable information from those signs.
Why it matters
This patent sits at the foundation of driver-assistance technology. Cars that can read speed limit signs, recognize stop signs, or alert drivers to warning signs represent a major step toward vehicles that understand their environment the way humans do. As autonomous driving and advanced safety systems have become competitive battlegrounds among automakers, being able to reliably identify and interpret road signage becomes a core technical capability worth protecting.
Real-world use
When you're driving a modern car equipped with intelligent speed-limit detection or sign-reading dashboard displays, this patent covers the core technology letting the vehicle identify and interpret the signs you pass.
Original USPTO abstract
An imaging system for a vehicle includes an imaging device having a field of view exteriorly and forward of the vehicle in its direction of travel, and an image processor operable to process the captured images in accordance with an algorithm. The algorithm comprises a sign recognition routine and a character recognition routine. The image processor processes the image data captured by the imaging device to detect signs in the field of view of the imaging device and applies the sign recognition routine to determine a sign type of the detected sign. The image processor is operable to apply the character recognition routine to the image data to determine information on the detected sign. The image processor applies the character recognition routine to the captured images in response to an output of the sign recognition routine being indicative of the detected sign being a sign type of interest.
Patent details
- Publication number
- US 2,005,232,469
- Filing date
- 2005-04-14
- Grant date
- Application — not yet granted
- Assignee
- Kenneth Schofield / Lynam Niall R
- Inventor(s)
- SCHOFIELD KENNETH, LYNAM NIALL R.
- CPC class
- G06V20/582
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