In this paper, a new traffic sign detection algorithm and a symbol recognition algorithm are proposed. For a traffic sign detection, a dominant color transform is introduced, which serves as a tool of highlighting a dominant primary color, while discarding the other two primary colors. For a symbol recognition, the curvilinear shape distribution on a circle centered on the centroid of the symbol, called a circular pattern vector, is used as a spatial feature of the symbol. The circular pattern vector is invariant to scaling, translation, and rotation. As simulation results, the effectiveness of traffic sign detection and recognition algorithms are confirmed.

In this paper, symbols and numerals in topographic maps are recognized by the multi-angled parallelism (MAP) matching method, and small dots and lines are extracted by the MAP operation method. These results are then combined to determine the value, position, and attributes of elevation marks. Also, we reconstruct three dimensional surfaces described by contours, which is difficult even for humans since the elevation symbols are sparse. In reconstruction of the surface, we define an energy function that enfores three constraints: smoothness, fit, and contour. This energy function is minimized by solving a large linear system of simultaneous equations. We describe experiments on 25,000:1 scale topographic maps of the Tsukuba area.