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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.
Way too complicated a solution for the problem. "Sorry, sir your headlight is not working. That'll be $2700 to fix it.
Just give the ability to automatically brighten and focus the lights on the slow driver ahead, the slower they get, the more focused the beams in their rear view and side mirrors.
That's all I need.
My thoughts exactly. Isn't my car already doing this without the use of GPS? Is there something I am overlooking?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
That read like it was from The Onion. Around individual rain drops?
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
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.
If they sense that disaster is impending, they simply turn themselves off to prevent the driver from becoming overly distressed in his last moments! (Think Peril-sensitive shades for your car!)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
.. yeah, so when will they be programmed to not blind oncoming drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. So far, any improvement I've noted in headlight technology is wasted by the fact that none of the new headlights seem to be illuminating the road, instead we're getting an illumination arms races because headlights are making it hard for anyone (other traffic, travelling in opposite directions) to see where and what they're doing.
I did a bunch of work recently on a headlight that automatically dims just the area around a detected oncoming car, so you can drive with your brights on all the time and it'll automatically filter out detected oncoming traffic so they don't get blinded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
(Sucks to be a pedestrian in this world, though...)
It uses steering wheel position, input from a webcam, and gps and map data to determine where the beam distribution is directed. This specific implementation only works on red cars, but we have some good ideas about how to generalize this.
Current car lights are already optimized somewhat to illuminate further and higher on the outside side of the car compared to the inside, to reduce glare for oncoming drivers. Doing this automatically, over a wider area, will be a nice stopgap until autonomous vehicles render this whole focus irrelevant.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Such over-engineered solution is probably works great on a clear night over smooth road with a new car. Try the same over potholed road, when entire front of your car is iced up, with a car that is now 6+ years old and both servos and sensors are worn.
My personal experiences with early generation of 'around the corner' adjustable headlights is that they visibly vibrate over bumps (you can see cutoff oscillate).
Yes ... the manufacturer's CEO's salary.
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My father bought a Cadillac in 1980 that had its headlights working like this. The high beams were on more or less by default, but would switch to regular headlights when an on-coming car approached.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
The bit you're apparently not grasping is something called a spatial light modulator. ... Couple it with a microwave radar or ultrasound sonar, and you can track individual raindrops and then cast shadows on them.
Then construct an object that appears to the system to be raindrops and you can put an invisible obstacle in the road. B-b
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Their technology is used to avoid blinding oncoming drivers instead of trying to "miss" raindrops.
You mean like this?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
My car's current headlights already do this
Only if the road is straight. As soon as the road curves a bit your lights are shining somewhere else.
...considering that self-driving cars are just a few weeks away?
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
I already have most of this function in my Opel Insignia... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiSCCXaxzXc
Steve -- If you have to call it a system, you don't know what it is.
" 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."
Very near 'future' indeed. My 2 year old VW Golf has that feature. Benz has had it for years.
..instead passing light around the individual drops
What the hell is THIS crap anyway? Sounds like a great way to both add a couple thousand dollars onto the price of a new car, and to also create a highly complex point of failure that you can't just stop by any auto parts store to fix in 10 minutes. Lights that follow the path of the car based on steering angle, sure, that's sensible (I have a helmet-mounted instead of handlebar-mounted light for night riding on my bike for that very reason) but the rest of it? Nonsense. Standard lighting on a gimbal that can adjust for conditions and steering would be good though.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Apparently most people have no idea about the appropriate use of high beams and auxiliary lights, manufacturers just keep making headlights brighter and more dazzling, and governments require them to be mounted higher rather than lower, resulting in oncoming drivers being blinded. In light of all this, automating the lighting systems could help, given that oncoming lighting is just getting worse every year.