The DVN Munich Workshop was equal parts symposium and celebration, the occasion being the 10th anniversary of Driving Vision News. More than 330 attendees—a full-capacity crowd—were present at this, the 16th DVN Workshop, including 18 car makers, 23 set makers, and 66 Tier-2s. All in all, over 100 companies, universities, and organisations were represented. And there was a high diversity of speakers from China, Germany, Japan, France, Korea, the Netherlands, America, Czechia, and Spain. There were 24 exhibition booths where companies from all over the world displayed their products, innovations, and capabilities. Exhibiting for the first time at a DVN Workshop were Myotek, the US-based OE supplier of high-technology, high-performance LED fog lamps and specialty lighting.
With a rubric of Digital Light, the lectures ran the gamut of topics from technical and technological developments, to thorough comparisons of the relative merits of various ways of achieving digitalisation of car lights, to questions of how best to grapple with regulatory lag and constraint and matters of societal acceptance of AVs. And beyond the improvements we can expect in the performance and versatility of advanced lighting systems, there were presentations giving high hope for big improvements in the quality of the light itself—Seoul Semiconductor described their new “SunLike” purple-based technology for producing white LEDs with a better output spectrum.
There was a lively panel discussion wherein participants—some of our community’s best minds—sparred over tough questions like what to do about the fact that LED headlamps, initially touted as energy-, weight-, and CO2-savers, are now growing heavier and more power hungry. There was a gala award ceremony recognising individuals for their remarkable contributions in our world, after which was a festive dinner at the fancy Munich Airport Hilton. Outside, there were flashy demonstrator cars showing off all kinds of digital light advances. And this workshop also served as the kickoff for the new DVN Workshop app for iOS and Android. The app made it easy for questions to be submitted to speakers, attendees to contact one another and keep track of the docket. This 125th report contains full reportage of the DVN Munich Workshop held on 30–31 January. It was an especially celebratory event, being the 16th DVN Workshop and the 10th anniversary of DVN. The Workshop included 31 lectures from automakers, lamp setmakers, component suppliers, service providers, technical-standards developers, and academics. Each lecture is summarised and annotated with our comments and reactions. A précis and commentary are also provided for the panel discussion.
Each of the eight demonstrator cars, seven DVN award recipients, and 13 expo booths is pictured and described, and there are photos of the exellent networking opportunities (and excellent food!) characteristic of DVN Workshops, wherever they are held. All in all, there are over 137 pictures and 14,000 words here. It’s a pity if you could not attend, but in this report you are about to get the next-best thing. We hope you get at least as much out of it as we of the DVN team have put into it.