Enhancing Light Blob Detection for Intelligent Headlight Control Using Lane Detection

In this paper, we propose an enhanced method for detecting light blobs (LBs) for intelligent headlight control (IHC). The main function of the IHC system is to automatically convert high-beam headlights to low beam when vehicles are found in the vicinity. Thus, to implement the IHC, it is necessary to detect preceding or oncoming vehicles. Generally, this process of detecting vehicles is done by detecting LBs in the images. Previous works regarding LB detection can largely be categorized into two approaches by the image type they use: low-exposure (LE) images or autoexposure (AE) images. While they each have their own strengths and weaknesses, the proposed method combines them by integrating the use of the partial region of the AE image confined by the lane detection information and the LE image. Consequently, the proposed method detects headlights at various distances and taillights at close distances using LE images while handling taillights at distant locations by exploiting the confined AE images. This approach enhances the performance of detecting the distant LBs while maintaining low false detections.