Research on Tracking and Detecting Algorithm for Road Signs Based on SCMCg

Fang Wang, Ruining Jiang, Zhirui Tang, Yaowei Pang, Junyi Zou, Chao Wu

Road sign detection is crucial for highway maintenance but often suffers from sign loss, occlusion, and spatial misjudgments such as repeated local detections or mapping errors. To address these issues, this study proposes YOLO-DeepSort, a tracking and detection framework integrating a novel Spatial Multivariate Clustering Algorithm with GPS information (SCMCg). The YOLOv9 detector is augmented using Mixed Local Channel Attention (MLCA) and DualConv modules to enhance image feature extraction and contextual awareness while compressing the theoretical model volume. In the tracking phase, DeepSort combined with SCMCg employs Delaunay triangulation and hierarchical GPS constraints to refine spatial clustering and data association. Validation was conducted on a mixed dataset comprising the CCTSDB and self-collected images from a Ningxia national road. Experimental results indicate that the proposed model operates efficiently at 21.4 M parameters, achieving a precision of 97.8%, a mean Average Precision (mAP) of 91.2%, and a tracking Success Rate of 97.3%. Compared to the baseline YOLOv8-DeepSort, absolute improvements of 4.60% in precision and 4.20% in mAP were observed. The integrated framework effectively mitigates occlusion and tracking spatial errors, providing a robust and lightweight methodology for the automated condition assessment of intelligent transportation infrastructure.