QCACNN: A Quantum Convolutional Neural Network Algorithm for Traffic Sign Recognition in Carbon-Intelligent Electric Vehicles

Traffic sign recognition is essential for autonomous driving, enhancing driving efficiency and ensuring road safety. Traffic signs utilize colors and patterns to relay critical information, with color accuracy being especially significant. Traditional models, reliant on extensive data and computing resources, struggle to meet the efficiency demands of electric vehicles with carbon-intelligent computing. Leveraging the physical properties of quantum superposition states, quantum computing offers a solution with its unique parallel computing capabilities, potentially enhancing recognition efficiency and facilitating real-time processing. Quantum convolutional neural networks (QCNNs) show promise in processing large-scale image data with improved efficiency and accuracy. However, most of QCNN researches focus on grayscale image classification, with limited studies on multichannel data. This article introduces the quantum channel attention convolutional neural network (QCACNN), which incorporates a quantum channel attention layer (QCAL) to enhance multichannel data classification. The experimental results demonstrate that QCACNNs surpasses traditional QCNNs in traffic sign recognition, performing comparably to conventional CNNs and SENet models with fewer computing resources. Detailed performance analysis and ablation studies validate the effectiveness of each component within this architecture. Quantum noise resistance tests confirm the robustness of QCACNN, making it a viable solution for electric vehicles with enhanced scalability.