Abstract: In order to solve the real-time problem in the process of vehicle identification ahead，a vehicle identification method based on license plate detection is proposed． The method is divided into three steps． First，the region of interest is extracted using details such as a road surface or a lane line in the image． Secondly，HSV( Hue-Saturation-Value) color space conversion and rectangular image detection are used to filter illumination changes，shadows and cluttered backgrounds from the extracted regions of interest，and vehicle license plate information is detected． The secondary positioning is performed and verified in the case where the initial detection fails． Finally，the detected vehicle information is used to identify the vehicle in front． The proposed method is evaluated on self-built and public database videos． The experimental results prove the effectiveness of the proposed forward vehicle identification method， with over 90% recognition rate and high real-time performance．

Key words: hue-saturation-value( HSV) color space, license plate detection, forward vehicle identification