Hector Fratty

Last week, DVN gave coverage to some of the lectures from the 2016 VISION congress. We continue that here, this time focusing on high resolution headlamps. A more comprehensive report, of course, will be published next month.

Dr. Carsten Wilks (Hella) on Next Generation HD Digital Lighting

Several high-definition headlamp technologies are under development: solid-state arrays, digital light processing, liquid crystal displays, and laser scanner types. This paper does not discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these different technologies but presents the new functionalities for a HD headlamp and the benefits for the driver.

Exemples of functions presented: welcome and living lights, adjustment of cutoff line sharpness depending on driving situation, improvement of the Glare-Free HB provided vehicle sensors are also enhanced, content illulination, specific object detection, and traffic sign highlighting.

As all those new functions would be enabled primarily by software development, this opens the door for the automaker to enhance and update the lighting behavior and functionalities after SOP using online updating of new software, adding functions on demand, and improving the driver’s comfort, safety, and night-driving experience.
Customer benefits and acceptance studies should take place to select future lighting functions and dimensionalities. Only then can the most suitable HD technologies be chosen.