Rear vehicle detection method in nighttime environment

The present invention discloses a rear vehicle detection method in a nighttime environment. The method specifically comprises the following steps: mounting an on-board camera in a middle position in the rear of a vehicle, and collecting an image by using a vision sensor of the on-board camera; performing sequence graying on the image collected from the vision sensor, and segmenting a bright area of the image; headlight verification: verifying whether the bright area in the image is a headlight according to prior knowledge and a perspective principle; and determining a position and a distance of a rear vehicle for the acquired headlight area by using a vehicle light matching principle. According to the method provided by the present invention, the real vehicle can be stably located, accurate environmental information is provided for a driver, and a pair of two matching vehicle lights of the same vehicle are found to determine the location of the rear vehicle. The rear vehicle is detected only by using visual information, so that costs are low and efficiency is high.