New automotive lighting technology devices are suitable to provide better illumination on the road and increase driving safety. Among them HID and AFS are the best example. With the increase of luminous flux and more than double of common halogen and the higher color temperature, the HID bulb represents a breakthrough of the lighting sources in term of power. With the introduction of AFS in Europe in 2003 also new light patterns have been allowed (eg. horizontal swiveling and fixed bending light). In combination with HID the real benefit for drivers has surely increased. Nevertheless, there are some cases where the increase of amount of light or the shape of the light pattern cannot guarantee the driver's safety, or at least this can be furthermore increased using other kind of assistance systems. Infrared based devices are suitable for this purpose under several points of view. Such systems are derived from military applications and due to cost decrease they are now quickly approaching the automotive business. In this paper the currently available systems in the near and far infrared (NIR and FIR) are presented and compared, together with a discussion on the trend of the infrared illuminators necessary for the active devices in the NIR. Some applications are already on the market and both systems mentioned in the paper are used without a clear indication in favor of one of the two kinds of system. Each of them has benefits and disadvantages. For sure, one of the biggest problems for every kind of driving assistance system is the way to provide information to the users and which information have to be shown. Long discussions have run between the defenders of head-up displays and of conventional display based devices. Future trend could be active systems using first CCD and then also CMOS devices, while for the IR emitters starting point are halogen sources, followed by semiconductors devices and finally IR lasers.
Infrared systems for night vision driver assistance
Infrarotsysteme für Nachtsicht-Fahrerunterstützung
2005
5 Seiten, 3 Bilder, 5 Quellen
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Englisch
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