Not very long ago, I was quite naive and felt amazed that sat-navs / GPS no matter in-car or external units could detect and notify the driver when the road the car was on had a particular speed limit restriction. Now when I just read about this, I didn’t feel too amazed because I sort of anticipated that this would soon one day be invented and become reality (didn’t think it would come from Vauxhall though!).

What Vauxhall’s latest invention does is that it is basically an on-board / built-in camera that takes snaps approx. 30 per second, it has a scanner in which will recognise speed signs and maybe other signs. At the moment, what we know is that once it is able to recognise the number on the speed limit sign, it translates that and brings it onto your dashboard, as pictured below.

One thing is certain, this new system by Vauxhall works differently from the system from GPS units as mentioned above, is that a good or bad thing, not entirely sure, hope it is reliable though. My only question about this type of system is, will it just be used to recognise speed limits or will it do other things too? In the county where I live, the council has put up all sorts of strange road signs that never seems to make itself clear about what it wants to say, maybe this new Vauxhall road sign scanner can offer us some help!

[via OhGizmo]