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Smart Headlights Adjust To Aid Drivers In Difficult Conditions
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute are developing smart headlights that not only trace a car's movement around bends, but are programmable to assist a driver in a wide range of driving conditions. The research team, at the institute's Illumination and Imaging Laboratory, is looking into designing headlights which do not highlight raindrops and snowflakes in bad weather, instead passing light around the individual drops and improving visibility. Its near-future design would also be able to avoid glare even when the high beam is in use, detecting up-coming vehicles and disabling the range of light that is directed at it. They also hope to incorporate GPS data to adjust the direction of the headlights according to the lane that a driver is occupying, illuminating it more brightly compared to surrounding lanes. The technology is supported by a looped system which will constantly read, assess and react to driving conditions. The prototype also features a built-in camera to capture visual data before transferring it to a computer processor installed in the vehicle, where it can be analyzed.
Those stupidly overbright headlamps that dazzle you could be replaced by ones that dim themselves when they see oncoming traffic.
Or, you know, just made illegal. I'm sure they don't actually improve road safety, at least, not for everyone.
The bit you're apparently not grasping is something called a spatial light modulator.
You've probably encountered one as a digital cinema projector, or possibly even own one for PowerPoint presentations.
Couple it with a microwave radar or ultrasound sonar, and you can track individual raindrops and then cast shadows on them.
Sounds unnecessarily expensive for consumer automotive, but might be nice for buses/locomotives, emergency vehicles or passenger aircraft.
I can see the fnords!
No you can't cast a shadow on each raindrop. . Only all of the raindrops Ina fixed plane. Because of the circle of confusion.