LTI, the Lighting Technology Institute of KTI, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, was founded in 1922.
There are 5 scientific departments and 3 professors:
• Cornelius Neumann in charge of optics and automotive lighting;
• Uli Lemmer in charge of sensors and nanotechnology;
• Michael Powalla in charge of thin film and photovoltaics.
Dr Karl Manz is in charge of the test house for automotive lighting.
30 students are educated for Master’s or PhD.
Prof. Neumann is developing research on physiological effects in the automotive lighting environment; on front, rear, and interior lamps, and on driver assistance systems. His department is also involved in LED technologies developing thermal and optical design.12 PhDstudents are working with him.
LTI is associated with the LTIK automotive lighting test house. DVN selected two of LTI’s interesting recent developments:
• Pixel Lighting – A Video projector with HID light source and 1,000 × 1,000 micro mirrors
The target is to define the best light considering the technology. A device with 6 HID video projectors equip a car able to run on the road.
Using an array of projectors running with HID lamps, a matrix-based illumination of the traffic space has been realised. Due to the high luminous flux of above 30,000 lumens, every possible light distribution can be visualised realistically on the street. The whole works is mounted on a rack in front of a test car so dynamic test studies can be performed in real traffic. An additional monocular camera is linked to the projectors and provides the possibility of detecting other participants of the traffic scene such as oncoming cars.
Below a schematic setting of the Propix test car: six projectors in front of the car, two data processors in the back and connections to the CAN bus of the car and to a scene camera
By developing special conversion algorithms it is possible to import CAL designed headlamp light distributions into the research headlamp for a kind of rapid beam prototyping. In combination with the camera system and the import of car sensor data there is chance to perform studies on technologies like glare free high beam or even more sophisticated lighting functions.