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."
This may be just fine for snow and rain. But what happens if the face of the headlight freezes up. 100 watts of bulbs inside the headlight will take care of that. Would high tech headlights, that like to be kept cool, do that.
You raise a good point, GSmith120. It makes me wonder if the problem could be solved more simply by offering several different illumination settings on the lights.
And, in order to guarantee great results, there should be one item mandated WHEN the auto companies implement these smart headlites. For driving in rain & snow, tires with minimal tread depth SHOULD be required! Then the full effect of driving at increased speed in inclement weather conditions will provide much statistical data for Version 2 of this great idea.
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One blogger commented that her dad's cousin had a car w/ auto-dimming headlites. CADILLAC & later LINCOLN had this feature dating back to the mid 1950s. There was a "maic eye" mounted in a pod in the center of the dashboard. On the front was fresnel lens focusered on a light detector. On the rear was a knob inscribed with the words "NEAR" and "FAR". One could adjust the sensitivity of the "auto" function with this knob. In subsequent years, the sensor was moved to various other places on the dashboard. At one point it was nestled in the left corner of the dash.
To JMiller, as the comedian Dennis Miller says, "THIN THE HERD!" Darwinism with tough love. You wanna drive faster than it's safe to drive? Fine. Be sure to do so when you're driving along a narrow mountain road with a cliff on one side and a flimsy safety rail.
Wow - a flaming blowtorch in the front of your car. I like that idea. That would really discourage pokey drivers slowing you down in the fast lane, wouldn't it? Move over, or POOF!
With the technology level required to mask illumination of raindrops, the car would certainly be able to incorporate the technology that masks the light heading toward the oncoming driver's eyes,while leaving the rest of the beam unaffected, so the oncoming driver would see pretty much a standard low beam. Masked High Beam (Glare-Free High Beam) technology already exists, albeit in a fairly simple form, in Europe.
I was quite unimressed with the video, but hey, if it's on YouTube it must be right, huh? If the reflection/detection/beam movement is feasible on the average automobile, it will still be some time in the future that this technology is commercially available.
I agree, neat idea. But do we really want people to be able to drive faster in rain and snow. Don't know if I think it's such a good idea to make that easier.
It'll be intersting to see if it catches on. Sometimes ideas like the dim your headlights just really don't catch on and others like power locks and windows do. Perhaps if it becomes a safety issue like the back up cameras it will become legislated.
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