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New computer vision app helps travelers interpret foreign road signs on the fly

Ever have a hard time understanding a road sign in another country? Computer vision startup Mapillary thinks it has a solution. You know how Google hopes to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful?” Swedish startup Mapillary wants to do the same thing with the world’s road signs. As it turns out, from warnings about polar bears to alerts concerning “ invisible cows ,” there are some pretty darn unusual roadside messages you’ll come across as you travel the globe. But if you’re only used to the regular old boring signs found in your neighborhood, being expected to understand all of them from behind the wheel is a tall order. Throw self-driving cars — which need to understand this stuff to get you safely from point A to point B — into the mix and things become even more confusing. Computer vision company  Mapillary  has spent the past several years working on just this problem. “Mapillary is a collaborative street-level imagery platform power