First-place Solution for Streetscape Shop Sign Recognition Competition

Abstract

Text recognition technology applied to street-view storefront signs is increasingly utilized across various practical domains, including map navigation, smart city planning analysis, and business value assessments in commercial districts. This technology holds significant research and commercial potential. Nevertheless, it faces numerous challenges. Street view images often contain signboards with complex designs and diverse text styles, complicating the text recognition process. A notable advancement in this field was introduced by our team in a recent competition. We developed a novel multistage approach that integrates multimodal feature fusion, extensive self-supervised training, and a Transformer-based large model. Furthermore, innovative techniques such as BoxDQN, which relies on reinforcement learning, and text rectification methods were employed, leading to impressive outcomes. Comprehensive experiments have validated the effectiveness of these methods, showcasing our potential to enhance text recognition capabilities in complex urban environments.