During the last 2 weeks, I travelled in the States. It was a great pleasure to meet the local lighting community, first in Charlotte for the GTB biannual session, and then for our DVN event in Michigan. More than 80 people gathered in Charlotte to work on lighting standards for use in the rest of the world, and then more than 400 attended the DVN event to listen, show, and tell about technology, innovation, and regulatory matters. It was a perfect time for networking in a very friendly atmosphere, with good food and beautiful weather.
The award for best lecture went to Colby Childress from Marelli, for his lecture about U.S ADB including dynamic levelling.
For the first time during a DVN event, we organized night drive demonstrations. There were 12 demo cars, including seven with ADB (Ford-ZKW, Ford-Marelli, GM-SL, Audi-Marelli, Magna, Valeo, and Hella) with different technology: S-Matrix (12 segments), M-Matrix (48 and 84), HD (25 kpx) and UHD (1.3 mpx). Sapphire Technical Solutions brought one of their U.S ADB test trailers to evaluate the performance of the various systems and demonstrate that there is a real, viable test method despite the vagueness and contradictions in FMVSS 108. The demonstrations started at 9:30 pm (it doesn’t get dark till late, this time of year). The queue was long for the vehicle testing, and the closed road was quite short, but it was for a lot of people the first time they experienced an ADB system and feedback was very positive.
The main takeaway I have from this night drive and the long, 13-lecture ADB session that afternoon is that lighting community is ready for ADB in the US. The test method is OK, technical constraints are known, solutions are identified, optical modules are developed. Camera systems need perhaps a final tuning to be able to detect all prescribed road-user stand-ins, including the pretend-motorcycle, to stave off annoying false detections.
Also last week, Rivian announced that their facelifted R1S and R1T are equipped for ADB in the U.S market (activable later via OTA update). And in your DVNewsletter this week, you’ll read about the Government of Canada’s request for comment on their intent to accept U.S ADB (along with the UNECE and SAE ADB specs already allowed in Canada).
All of the points above are good signs to have ADB on American roads very soon, at least on some very expensive cars.
Sincerely yours,
