It seems a bit out of place when it comes to Robocar's big leap forward in science and technology as to how to design better car headlights for human driving: After all, the utopia of autonomous vehicles is the future wherever a car Neither he nor she will be able to reach his destination safely without looking forward.
However, almost half of traffic fatal accidents have occurred late in the night, and as we wait for the rise of tech utopia, as the cartoon The Jetsons portrays, improving road visibility in the dark may be good The idea, especially now.
Automotive manufacturers, first-line suppliers and light source technology providers in Europe and Japan have already started flooding into the emerging Adaptive Driving Beam (ADB) market.
Headquartered in the Netherlands, LED lighting company Lumileds recently told "EETimes" interview, explained that when the vehicle camera to the approaching / coming vehicles or pedestrians, ADB can automatically adjust the light, the LED lights dim each Or to move the light beam downward and laterally.
'You can always drive the high beam to provide the best level of illumination,' and ADB automatically adjusts the beam to match the driving, said Dirk Vanderhaeghen, senior director of global strategic marketing at LED-based Lumileds Automotive. 'We are Focus on lighting designed for safety.
Vanderhaeghen said the European ADB camp includes not only premium car suppliers such as Audi and Mercedes-Benz, but small-scale vehicles such as Opel, Peugeot and Citroen are also coming to ADB. Japan Toyota, also an important promoter of ADB, added: 'We are now even receiving an ADB quote from China.'
Hector Fratty, executive director of Driving Vision News (and a Paris based automotive lighting technology and market research specialist) told ADETs that ADB is "the biggest innovation in automotive lighting." Although ADB-equipped cars Currently only accounting for 1% of the global automotive market, but is expected to grow to 15% by 2025.
Curiously, the ADB is mysterious to most driving in the US ADB is banned in the United States because the United States Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards Authority (FMVSS) requires separate high beam and low beam settings.
Technology providers such as Lumileds hope this situation will change quickly.
The ADB is currently being evaluated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and some suppliers expect the United States to release ADBs by 2018 or by 2020.
Why push ADB now?
Automotive 'headlights' technology may sound 'old', but ADB does not appear without the recent popularity of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).
Phil Magney, Founder and Principal Consultant, Vision Systems Intelligence (VSI), said: "I really am interested in adaptive headlamp systems, although it is not directly related to autopilot.It is interesting that the resources and security systems ADB needs The same, especially the front camera.
In last year's ADB Test Procedures, performance requirements, and design guidelines for ADB report issued by the Automotive Engineers Association (SAE), SAE concluded:
Recent advances in vehicle technology have led to the active control of road lighting that enables it to dim or turn off portions of the light beam depending on the vehicle and / or its surroundings, which is important for lane departure warning, automatic high beam The combination of start-up and technological advancement of other functions makes it possible to identify and locate road users of other vehicles at night and actively limit glare that may cause discomfort to road users of these vehicles.
Asked about what technologies ADB needs, Magney said: "These systems use fairly sophisticated algorithms to make lighting decisions and you also need a powerful electronic control unit (ECU) to perform algorithms and perform Calculations. Also requires different data transmission cable, which depends on the use of the camera.
Major manufacturers and technological innovation
According to Fratty, there are about 10 major players in the ADB market, including Hella (Lippstadt), Koito Manufacturing (Tokyo), Valeo (Paris) and Automotive Lighting (Reutlingen, Germany), the top four automotive lighting suppliers.
Fratty said: 'ADB is very important and many second-tier suppliers and lighting technology vendors are working hard to make their solutions competitive.' 'He added that from mechanical masks, LED matrix beams, digital micromirror elements (DMDs), LCDs, μAFS And the beginning of laser scanning, lighting technology for ADB lighting is rapidly evolving.
According to Vanderhaeghen, lighting suppliers have increased the number of pixel rows and columns (one pixel per pixel equals one LED) used by matrix LEDs to improve accuracy. "We now have a range of solutions that range from 20 For example, the Mercedes 2018 C-Class coupe introduced at the AutoMobility LA in California, USA, is equipped with 84 LED matrix modules using the Lumileds LUXEON Neo solution.
To provide even higher brightness, some engineers are exploring DMDs that light up and shut down 1 million of the pixels on it, Vanderhaeghen said, adding that the pixel-boosting effect of DMDs has also contributed to the development of new applications, noting: 'It Obstacles can be identified on the road, and even can read signs and signposts.
According to Fratty, other new technologies for ADB include the Micro Adaptive Forwarding System (μAFS).
The μAFS program, supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, is an innovative LED chip jointly developed by Osram, Daimler, Fraunhofer, Hella and Infineon that will "bring ADBs to new Level '. The new LED chip contains 1,024 individually controllable pixels.
According to the German research consortium, 'in the current adaptive headlamp, a number of LED elements are mounted side by side and stacked on top of each other in the headlight. Additional electronic components are also required for turning the light segments on and off because of the limited headlamp space and the limited number of lights. "The Alliance said that using the new method developed under the μAFS program, 'LED's electronic start-up is now integrated into the chip, resulting in more High resolution, but also to meet the limited space requirements.
A year later Osram completed the first hybrid LED prototype called Eviyos under the μAFS program, which Osram described as a "big step towards the first market-ready, smart, controllable, high-resolution LED."
In late September of this year, OSRAM Specialty Lighting integrated the prototype LED in an exhibit and presented it at the International Automotive Lighting Symposium (ISAL) in Germany.
A spokesman for Osram said: "Many lighting manufacturers have shown an interest in Eviyos, looking at this and other technologies to meet the needs of future ADBs." However, she did not want to discuss further changes to the commercial release plan detail.
In addition, laser scanning is under development, further enabling rapid left-to-right, top-down scanning, opening and closing.
When asked about the timeline for each new technology, Vanderhaeghen predicts that prototypes (such as DMDs) to improve resolution and target higher-order ADBs are expected to appear around 2019. He believes laser scanning will not have to wait until 2021 Year.At the same time, he thinks LED matrix is likely as a mainstream technology, accounting for the largest share of the ADB market.
Fratty believes that while light technology is important, the value is in the ADB module. "The added value lies in the circuitry and drivers that are incorporated into the module." Companies such as OSRAM, Lumileds and Everlight are aggressively competing.
Why the United States banned?
So why is ADB disabled in the United States?
Magney explained that FMVSS '108' does not allow the use of 'adaptive headlamp' systems, but allows beam switching systems (commonly known as adaptive headlamps) that are currently common in luxury cars. '
In contrast to the high beam switching system, the adaptive headlamp system will adjust the beam to shield the oncoming vehicle while illuminating the rest of the road. Conversely, the high beam switching system will be near The dynamic switching between light and high beam will block certain sections of the illuminated area. "Magney explained: 'Both systems require front cameras that can read and sort the opposite car.'
So why did the U.S. regulators take a long time to accept ADB? Magney said: "A lot of resistance comes from the express language of a particular standalone and low-beam headlamp, and safety, testing, and compatibility Come from
Although the U.S. federal agencies have not yet made it clear, Magney pointed out that FMVSS will be updated in the near future.
Fratty, on the other hand, suspects that the European-American gap may stem from 'business politics.' Europe has several major players in the automotive lighting market, while the United States lags behind Japan and Europe.
Lighting affects the structure of the vehicle
As Magney pointed out, ADB and vehicle safety features have a complex relationship, in a sense very interesting. Vanderhaeghen frankly, in order to ADB collocation with the vehicle camera, the two must work closely with the ADB LED needs to be processed according to the camera The image goes on and off, saying: 'Once the data is encoded and recognized, it must be sent to the headlamp system, for example via a CAN bus, to convert it into an action that turns it on and off on the LED matrix.
Magney agrees, saying: 'Without the front-facing camera and some of the smart features, you can not use adaptive headlights, and if done in the camera module, you can send control signals through the CAN bus, Do not be any problems.
However, if the camera has to take care of many things, such as systems in a Tesla car, you have to have a high-throughput cable that connects the camera to the processing area. "Magney cited the Gigabit Multimedia Sequence Link (GMSL), FPD-Link and GB Ethernet options.
So, what is the advantage for ADB if LiDar and headlights are integrated, or can we see the vision / headlamp integration soon?
Magney said: 'The headlamp module is a good place to put the sensors because they are well protected and can be kept clean and close to supporting electronics.'
Turning headlights into a gigantic light, he emphasized that 'it may be a long-term goal in the near term.' "On the other hand, he added: 'If the car is a self-driving car without driving then you do not need all Lighting ... At that time, the laser headlamp was essentially a light transmitter.