Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
If researchers at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute have anything to say about it, the automotive headlight of the future will be able to adjust the changing environment, let drivers see through rain or snowstorms, follow GPS directions and avoid road construction.
Those innovations, the subject of recent articles by Engadget and Scientific American, would be able to parse raindrops to cancel them out and would use a feedback system to regularly improve performance. For instance, it could detect vehicles coming towards the car, preventing oncoming lights from blinding the driver and improving overall safety.
In the future, the system could be able to collect satellite data that will adjust the direction of the headlights in concert with GPS directions, help make your lane appear brighter than others on the roadway, and provide an early warning when there are obstacles in the driver’s path.
Improving upon previous smart headlight technology
The Carnegie Mellon team, led by associate professor Srinivasa Narasimhan, is building upon a previous version of their smart headlight system with looked to improve visibility in bad weather by anticipating the movement and velocity of precipitation and shining the headlights into spaces between them, according to Scientific American.
Developed in 2012, that prototype used a digital camera to record the motions of raindrops and snowflakes every eight milliseconds, then used a computer algorithm to predict where each one would be a few milliseconds later, the website noted. It would then deactivate light beams which would otherwise shine upon precipitation once it reached its expected location.
Narasimhan’s team claimed that their technology would reduce the visibility of rain four meters away from the headlights by more than two-thirds when the vehicle was traveling at a speed of 18 mph (30 km/hour). It also reduced the visibility of slower-moving snowflakes by as much as 60 percent, and one version had a response time of less than 1.5 milliseconds.
That version, which the website said was approximately the same size as a small foot locker, is mounted on the hood of an automobile using suction cups. The most recent prototype, however, is smaller and can fit inside the headlight compartment of a truck, explained Robotics Institute scientist and longtime project team member Robert Tamburo.
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