A method for on-road night-time vehicle headlight detection and tracking

A novel method for vehicle detection and tracking, which is capable to correctly detect and track vehicle headlights in rural and urban areas is presented. The detection procedure does not require image thresholding, or other preprocessing, which is commonly used in other methods, thus offering robustness and performance. A tracking method based on Joint Probability Data Association Filter (JPDAF) efficiently associates object detections with existing tracks and provides a track management system. The method deals with object appearance and disappearance and can handle false detections introduced by the frame-based detector.