8/07/12 Blinded By The Light

Courtesy: Geek.com

The image above is a familiar sight when it’s pouring down rain while you are driving at night. The problem isn’t necessarily that your headlights are too dim or dark. It’s actually the opposite; they are too bright, and that causes a glare from the reflections of the raindrops, which can make it very difficult for the driver to see very far. The same thing happens when you are driving through heavy snowfall or hail. It also has an impact on the drivers traveling in the other direction because they don’t see you until much later, which increases the risk of an accident happening. So what can you do? You obviously can’t prevent it from always raining during the evening hours. Well, scientists at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute think they have come up with a solution….high tech headlights.

Combining cameras and computers they are able to predict the trajectory of each rain drop. This allows the new smart headlight to adjust the direction of the light being put out by a headlight, avoiding the glare from the raindrops. A high-speed camera that detects drops, uses an algorithm to work out the raindrops location just a few milliseconds later.

Once the algorithm is completed, the headlight flickers very rapidly and redirects light around the drops. To the driver the rain essentially isn’t there, or at least not lit up. The flicker is also not visible to human eyes because it happens so quickly.

"If you know where the rain drops are, you can sort of stream light between them," says lead researcher Srinivasa Narasimhan.



Courtesy: Positive Press Daily

However, this new technology won’t exactly be rolling out on next year’s car models. The current system has a few flaws that need to be tweaked first, including losing effectiveness at higher speeds, and adjusting for turbulence (speed bumps or potholes) or vibrations. But they're working on it. Also, the system being used in the labs at the University use a DLP projector, but the one that would likely end up on your car would be made up of lots LED lights, which are cheaper, and could be turned on and off very quickly.

Courtesy: Dipity