Hector Fratty

The biennial VISION congress on automotive lighting and driver assistance, organised by Driving Vision News founder and chief Hector Fratty under the auspices of the French Society of Automotive Engineers (SIA), will be held this coming October 6-7 at Versailles, France.

The congress consists of three parts:

• 30 lectures of twenty minutes each, spanning over two days
• An exhibition area devoted to lighting equipments and services, with a particular focus on Tier 2 products and services. Lighting suppliers have long lacked a motor show or forum where they can exhibit their products, and VISION has the ambition to become such a place.
• Night test ride-and-drives on a 5-km private test track, with demonstrations of the latest technology and implementation of adaptive lighting, driver assistance, and LED headlamps. The test track will have three different segments: the first for night test drive, the second for low speed night drive (pedestrian and obstacle detection), and the third for special lighting and driver assistance systems.

This year, the Steering Committee received 60 abstracts, an increase of more than 50% over 2008. This huge number of abstracts gives a great responsibility to the Committee to select the 30 best lectures according to four criteria: innovation level, industrial potentiality, relevance of scientific elements, and importance of the subject for safety improvement.
The lighting abstracts show the priority of our industry to develop and improve intelligent lighting systems, Xenon 35- and 25-watt systems, and LED technology (including making automotive lighting more affordable). The driver assistance abstracts emphasise the development of DAS mainly in relationship with safety—visibility and pedestrian detection. Clearly, the link between lighting and driver assistance is becoming stronger as these two aspects of vehicle safety are increasingly combined into comprehensive driver perception aid and enhancement systems.