Faces aren't the only thing NICTA researchers are developing systems to recognise: research engineer Niklas Pettersson's team has created a system that can understand road signs.
Pettersson said the automatic recognition system could be used to update old maps for GPS devices, using small cameras inside garbage trucks or taxis.
The system recognises the signs 90 percent of the time — the same hit rate as human operators.
One challenge has been getting the program to run on a small processor, Pettersson said, so that each camera can send just the coordinates of the sign back to a central system. The information will either be sent via mobile networks or via Wi-Fi hotspots at certain points, such as taxi ranks.
The team is now selecting a camera and processor to build a prototype.
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