By Hector Fratty, DVN President
The car is a Mercedes-Benz S-Class equipped with a prototype high-definition headlight system developed by Daimler in collaboration with Automotive Lighting for the headlamps and Texas Instrument for the chip . This new generation of lighting technology is called DIGITAL LIGHT. The headlamps are digitally controlled and calibrate the light to be distributed according to the situation in all traffic conditions. Sensors such as cameras and radars detect other road users and the vehicle’s surroundings. Intelligent control logic for the dynamic light function, developed in house, evaluates data as well as digital road maps in a matter of milliseconds and dynamically tailors the light distribution to give the driver optimal vision without glaring others. With these prototypes, Mercedes-Benz shows the possibilities offered by such a High-Definition-Headlamp-System. The Mercedes-Benz engineers pointed out that there are still some questions to be answered about the approval and regulation of such systems, but the technology with an HD light distribution is in focus today.
The headlamps are configured as follows: