Traffic Sign Recognition in Autonomous Driving: Dataset, Benchmark, and Field Experiment

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Main Authors: Zhao, Guoyang, Qi, Weiqing, Zhang, Kai, Zhang, Chenguang, Gong, Zeying, Bi, Zhihai, Chen, Kai, Ma, Benshan, Liu, Ming, Ma, Jun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Zhao, Guoyang
Qi, Weiqing
Zhang, Kai
Zhang, Chenguang
Gong, Zeying
Bi, Zhihai
Chen, Kai
Ma, Benshan
Liu, Ming
Ma, Jun
author_facet Zhao, Guoyang
Qi, Weiqing
Zhang, Kai
Zhang, Chenguang
Gong, Zeying
Bi, Zhihai
Chen, Kai
Ma, Benshan
Liu, Ming
Ma, Jun
contents Traffic Sign Recognition (TSR) is a core perception capability for autonomous driving, where robustness to cross-region variation, long-tailed categories, and semantic ambiguity is essential for reliable real-world deployment. Despite steady progress in recognition accuracy, existing traffic sign datasets and benchmarks offer limited diagnostic insight into how different modeling paradigms behave under these practical challenges. We present TS-1M, a large-scale and globally diverse traffic sign dataset comprising over one million real-world images across 454 standardized categories, together with a diagnostic benchmark designed to analyze model capability boundaries. Beyond standard train-test evaluation, we provide a suite of challenge-oriented settings, including cross-region recognition, rare-class identification, low-clarity robustness, and semantic text understanding, enabling systematic and fine-grained assessment of modern TSR models. Using TS-1M, we conduct a unified benchmark across three representative learning paradigms: classical supervised models, self-supervised pretrained models, and multimodal vision-language models (VLMs). Our analysis reveals consistent paradigm-dependent behaviors, showing that semantic alignment is a key factor for cross-region generalization and rare-category recognition, while purely visual models remain sensitive to appearance shift and data imbalance. Finally, we validate the practical relevance of TS-1M through real-scene autonomous driving experiments, where traffic sign recognition is integrated with semantic reasoning and spatial localization to support map-level decision constraints. Overall, TS-1M establishes a reference-level diagnostic benchmark for TSR and provides principled insights into robust and semantic-aware traffic sign perception. Project page: https://guoyangzhao.github.io/projects/ts1m.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_23034
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Traffic Sign Recognition in Autonomous Driving: Dataset, Benchmark, and Field Experiment
Zhao, Guoyang
Qi, Weiqing
Zhang, Kai
Zhang, Chenguang
Gong, Zeying
Bi, Zhihai
Chen, Kai
Ma, Benshan
Liu, Ming
Ma, Jun
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Traffic Sign Recognition (TSR) is a core perception capability for autonomous driving, where robustness to cross-region variation, long-tailed categories, and semantic ambiguity is essential for reliable real-world deployment. Despite steady progress in recognition accuracy, existing traffic sign datasets and benchmarks offer limited diagnostic insight into how different modeling paradigms behave under these practical challenges. We present TS-1M, a large-scale and globally diverse traffic sign dataset comprising over one million real-world images across 454 standardized categories, together with a diagnostic benchmark designed to analyze model capability boundaries. Beyond standard train-test evaluation, we provide a suite of challenge-oriented settings, including cross-region recognition, rare-class identification, low-clarity robustness, and semantic text understanding, enabling systematic and fine-grained assessment of modern TSR models. Using TS-1M, we conduct a unified benchmark across three representative learning paradigms: classical supervised models, self-supervised pretrained models, and multimodal vision-language models (VLMs). Our analysis reveals consistent paradigm-dependent behaviors, showing that semantic alignment is a key factor for cross-region generalization and rare-category recognition, while purely visual models remain sensitive to appearance shift and data imbalance. Finally, we validate the practical relevance of TS-1M through real-scene autonomous driving experiments, where traffic sign recognition is integrated with semantic reasoning and spatial localization to support map-level decision constraints. Overall, TS-1M establishes a reference-level diagnostic benchmark for TSR and provides principled insights into robust and semantic-aware traffic sign perception. Project page: https://guoyangzhao.github.io/projects/ts1m.
title Traffic Sign Recognition in Autonomous Driving: Dataset, Benchmark, and Field Experiment
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.23034