Patent ID: 8848980

Claim:
A method for detecting a front vehicle, comprising: detecting a front moving light area of an own vehicle in at least one image of a front scene of the own vehicle obtained at a time; detecting a vehicle layer from a first image of the at least one image, the detecting the vehicle layer including, dividing the first image into a plurality of layers, determining a number of lights in each of the plurality of layers, determining a selected layer of the plurality of layers, the selected layer having a highest number of lights among the plurality of layers, determining whether the highest number of lights exceeds a threshold, and determining the vehicle layer based on whether the highest number of lights exceeds the threshold, and eliminating a moving light area appearing above the vehicle layer from the front moving light area; extracting a light area pair from the front moving light area generated from the eliminating such that a front vehicle candidate is generated; and verifying that the front vehicle candidate is the front vehicle in cases where the front vehicle candidate meets characteristics of a vehicle light.