Drivers who turn on their high-beam headlights during heavy snowfall quickly learn what the term "blinding snowstorm" really means. Light bounces off the flakes and returns to the driver's eye, ruining forward vision. Now, however, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's (CMU) Robotics Institute believe they've found a solution to that problem. By combining projector-type headlights with camera-based sensors, they believe they can direct light between snowflakes or raindrops, reducing the reflection that temporarily blinds the driver.
"We can illuminate the space around the particles," Srinivasa Narasimhan, associate professor of robotics at CMU, told us. "And we can do it because we now have a way to control light over space and time."
Carnegie Mellon University created a smart headlight system that directs light between rain drops or snowflakes. (Source: CMU)
CMU's development relies on automakers to go beyond traditional headlights, to light sources such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), liquid crystal displays (LCDs), or Digital Light Processing (DLP). By combining one of those light sources with camera-based sensors and a microprocessor, CMU researchers have proven that they can locate the offending droplets and turn off the light pixels that would otherwise scatter off them.
"For a long time, the automotive headlight has been a bulb with mirrors and lenses to process the beam," Narasimhan said. "Here, we want to use a light projector instead of a bulb. That way, we have a million pixels that we can control."
The heart of the system is the powerful software developed at CMU, which recognizes the speeding precipitation droplet and turns off the correct pixel in response to it. The software -- along with the light source, sensor, and an Intel quad core i7 processor -- form an embedded system that that reads the sensor signal and orchestrates the on/off reaction at each pixel.
The key to the system's ability to do that is the co-location of the light projector and the camera. CMU employs a splitter to send out a beam of light and pick up the reflected light from the same pixel. It does all this -- captures the image, processes the data, and projects the light -- in a scant 13ms. Ultimately, the researchers want to reduce that time to about 2ms to 3 ms, which they said would enable the system to work in a raging thunderstorm on a car driving 60 mph. To bring the time down, they plan to incorporate the light source, sensor, and processor chip in a single embedded system. "What we need is tight integration between the LCD, camera, and embedded computer," Narasimhan said. "With everything tightly coupled, we can bring the time down by eight milliseconds."
A far more cost effective way of improving headlights would be to ensure that the bulb, be it incandescent or an LED assemly can be changed easily and effectively, so we do not have one in three cars (my estimate) with faulty headlights, largely because the bulbs cannot be changed without major disassembly - I have even heard of one car that needs the bumper removed to change a headlight bulb!
A reversion to TRUE foglights which have an accurate cut-off of the top of the beam, instead of 'intense visililty lights' currently fitted and misdescribed as foglights could be coupled with one relatively simple improvement. The switching, now likely to be mostly electronic, should switch between NORMAL and FOG/SNOW; the dipping on Normal should be as current main lighting, but dipping when FOG/SNOW selected being between DIPPED BEAM and (true) FOGLIGHTS.
This will overcome the fact so few know how to use foglights, and virtually all factory-fitted foglights being rubbish.
I agree Beth, it is very cool. I'm not a snow driver growing up in a place where I saw snow maybe twice as a child.
This project reminds me of many years ago when some cars had the ability to dim their lights automatically. I was a child when it came out but remembered my Dad's cousin had a car with this feature. I remember her saying it would dim it lights when they would pass roadside signs, don't think she kept the car long.
My question is what do the drivers of oncoming vehicle see? Currently, the driver is supposed to dim their lights when approaching oncoming traffic, this appears to assume fully illuminating the field of view, which will blind oncoming traffic.
I seriously doubt that this will ever be fielded in any car for cost reasons alone.
This is the STUPIDEST design idea I've seen come down the pike in at least an eon!
Here's the ultimate solution! With the 3% to 6% fuel saving that we will all realize with our S/S vehicles, what they SHOULD do is to divert that fuel to a super-efficient Bunsen burner built into the chrome on steel front bumper. When a sensor detects it's either raining and/or snowing, a spark-gap ignitor initializes the atomized fuel vapor to expel a plasma-hot flame in front of the vehicle. The rain/snow will be dispersed, and driving safety will be enhanced. By eliminating the water build-up, the roads will stay drier & safer to travel on.
The only problem I foresee is that the nozzles built into the bumper would have to be manufactured of an alumina substrate to withstand the plasma temperatures expected.
A really bad idea! Most, not all, drivers I encounter have hard enough time driving on dry pavement during the day with all the distractions.....texting (epidemic), eating, chit chatting on the cell phone. Now, lets give these people the ability to drive thier car during a blinding snow or rain storm and still perform all of the above, not to mention that now you will be able to drive your car in conditions that you couldn't even maneuver in to begin with, or the car has the capability to maneuver in. Really dumb. I want my tax money back, thank you.
It's a very clever idea: and having driven current adaptive high beams that blank out a vertical strip corresponding to oncoming driver's eyes, I think it would be similarly good to drive with.
But
For this to get on cars on the road, 4 things are needed
1) a massive increase in power for a megapixel projector: current projectors are nowhere near the intensity of headlights (lumen comparison is bogus in this case: think candelas). And putting a beam splitter in the light path will only make it worse.
2) Software that can handle real automotive conditions: when a car is bouncing up and down as well as driving forward and round bends, the predicted droplet path is going to be quite complex! Not to mention that this is a safety critical application.
3) A legal framework that will permit it. Automotive industry is global, so to justify the expenditure you've got to be able to sell in all major markets. That means persuading the relevant authorities to update FMVSS 108, UNECE R123, and Chinese GB-regs for a start: and you won't get far in persuading them unless the problems at 1) and 2) above have been pretty much resolved.
4) A means to build them to an acceptable cost: certainly no automotive manufacturer could make a business case with current megapixel projectors, let alone the super-projectors we need here.
It appears that few if any posters actually read the article and viewed the supporting videos. If one actually reads and looks then one would see how inaccurate the posted comments appear. Can anyone see how you might actually make the idea work and bypass the obvious pitfalls?
Thr article says: "Demonstration of the prototype system with an artificial rain drop generator is encouraging making the falling rain disappear in front of the observer."
WTF is an "artificial rain drop generator". These guys need to be doing research in a rubber room.
This makes me want to cry. I heard this morning that EVERY american (including my 5 year old God son) already owes $139,000 in national debt and these so-called "researchers" are spending money on this i'm going to try and explain this to Kory (the 5 year old) that his entire life is going to be spent paying this stuff off.
Engineering and science have finally come down to this.
I'm going to work for McDonalds. At least they are not forcing Kory to pay for my damned hamburgers.
I second your third-statement skepticism; Seppanton had that assessment earlier as well.
I also wonder who funds this sort of thing. Hopefully it's from spare change they had lying around, and not interfering with really important research such as whether lab rats prefer light or dark chocolate.
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