According to the German news outlet Frankforter Allgefmeine Zeitung, Valeo are working on a camera system called “BeamAtic Premium”.
It makes the high beam more intelligent in order to bring more light on the road and its surrounding, without glaring the oncoming traffic. The small camera system — 3,5cm x 2,7cm — recognizes all light sources in front of the vehicle and distinguishes between the lighting of streets and vehicles. Oncoming vehicles will be spared from strong light by using the mechanics of the bending light in fractions of a second, faster than the reaction-time of the human eye. Without other vehicles, the camera system automatically activates the full high beam, recognizing street lamps, the low beam. Valeo has already some orders for the BeamAtic Premium.
Another of Valeo’s intelligent light systems is already realised in the Audi Q7. The “Tri-Xenon-Headlamp”, in addition to the low and high beam functions, has a longer-reaching motorway beam automatically switched on at a speed of 115 km/h. The motorway lighting has the light distribution of a low beam, but a 60 m longer range, a higher intensity on the road and an adaptive mode to avoid glaring of oncoming drivers. It is one of the first three-beam systems commercialised since American experimentation with a third “turnpike beam”, higher than low and lower than high beam, were terminated in the early 1970s for lack of an acceptable means of allowing the driver to select and activate the correct one of the three beams instantly and reliably. Today’s intelligent automatic controls solve that problem.
