Carnegie Mellon University research and development of intelligent LED lights can reduce the incidence of accidents

Beijing on September 11th news Science Daily reported, intelligent robot technology research institute of Carnegie Mellon University, the United States recently developed high beam headlights so that drivers can make full use of, no need to worry about dazzling lights will cause the oncoming drivers not see the road in the rain, or snow day or night driving from dazzling light.

This programmable front headlight can sense and track any number of oncoming drivers, blocking or possibly irradiating the driver's eye with a small portion of the high beam. In the snow or rain, headlights by tracking vehicles in the vicinity of snowflakes or rain and blocking the narrow headlights and improve the driver's vision of silver plating, the silver coating will light reflected into the eyes of the driver and the rain.

"Even in the 130 years after the invention of the headlights, more than half of the vehicle collision occurred at night and death, although many times not because of traffic jam," the research of robotics professor Siliniwasa - Nalaxinhan (Srinivasa Narasimhan) said. "However, using our programmable system, we can make the headlights look brighter, while not causing other drivers on the road to distraction. "

Project chief engineer Robert Tamburo (Robert Tamburo) will put this system in the laboratory test results show in September 10th at the European Conference on computer vision Switzerland held in Zurich. By Narassin Khan, Tamburo research group and other researchers developed using digital light processing (DLP) to replace the standard searchlight headlights or LED group. This allows researchers to disperse light into 1 million beams of light, each of which can be independently controlled by an onboard computer.

The use of a camera to detect oncoming vehicles, rainfall and other objects, such as road signs. 1 million beams of light can be adjusted accordingly, some darkening to protect the oncoming driver's eyes, while others brighten to highlight the road signs or lanes. However, the overall lighting changes are very subtle, in general, the driver will not notice the difference.

The system delay time interval between camera detection and corresponding brightness adjustment -- about 1 to 2.5 milliseconds, Tamburo said. This near instantaneous response means that in most cases the system does not require a sophisticated algorithm to predict the oncoming driver or the precise location of the snow when the headlights react.

Our system can prevent the glare of the driver's eyes under the premise of normal high-speed operation, Narassin Khan said. Rain and snow is a more difficult problem, the system can reduce glare at low speed, but with the increase in speed, the system efficiency may be reduced.

In addition to prevent glare, searchlights can also be used when there is no clear road prominent roadway lane or edge, or snow blurred lane, which is very useful for driver assistance. When connected to the navigation system, a programmable headlight can be used to project an arrow or other direction to guide the driver visually.

"We can do this by using the same headlights, or even more," said Narassin Khan. This is in stark contrast to the latest lighting systems installed by some car manufacturers. These light system includes a number of LED systems, they are mainly dimming some LED lights to reduce glare, while rotating headlights to help drivers see the winding road. "However, most of these lights are disposable systems, and different headlights are used for different tasks. Narassin Khan added.

The research team assembled their experimental system and this system is on top of a pickup truck engine cover using the existing components, as the third road test of the car headlights. The research team plans to install a smaller version of the system in front of the truck headlights next year.

Although the intelligent lighting system development should be greater than the standard car, but Narassin Khan said that this system can now be assembled in trucks and buses, these vehicle headlights are more prone to the dazzling light, because of their high position from the surface. In the end, miniaturization should make this kind of smart lights compatible with smaller vehicles.

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