Principal Investigator

Srinivasa Narasimhan

Status

Completed

Start Date

Jan. 1, 2014

End Date

Dec. 1, 2014

Project Type

Research Advanced

Grant Program

MAP-21 TSET - Tier 1 (2012 - 2016)

Grant Cycle

2014 TSET UTC

Visibility

Public

Abstract

The long term goal of the project is to develop the next generation headlights for vehicles, that are programmable, multi-task, react to the road environment and enhance driver safety. Smart headlights will better illuminate the road, spotlight obstacles, signs and lanes, project directions on the road, reduce glare and increase visibility in dangerous rain and snowstorms. The U.S. National Highway Safety Administration reports that annually 400000 crashes and 4000 fatalities happen during rain and snowstorms at night. The additional cost of the headlight will be small (a few hundred dollars per vehicle) compared to the direct and indirect savings due to reduced crashes. The project has strong commercialization potential, with vehicle exterior lighting becoming more and more adaptive recently. For 2013, the goal will be to design and build a prototype headlight with 500 Hz reaction capability and algorithms that can detect and highlight obstacles as well as reduce glare for oncoming drivers. This prototype will be tested in laboratory conditions and outdoors.    

Description

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ILIM/projects/IL/smartHeadlight/

Timeline

01/2013-12/2013

2010-2011
The smart headlight was born as a stereoscopic system consisting of two monochrome cameras and a DLP projector. The camera /projector speed was 60 Hz and the system had a latency of 70 ms.

2012-2013
A beam splitter was used to optically co-locate a monochrome camera with a DLP projector. System speed was increased to 120 Hz and latency was reduced to 13 ms.

Strategic Description / RD&T

Deployment Plan

Midway through 2013, we have completed the initial design of the headlight (see top figure) that consists of three components: a camera to observe the environment, a processing unit that analyzes the captured imagery and a spatial light modulator that controls the headlight beams in space and time for the required task.

One of the tasks for this headlight is to stream light between precipitation particles so that the drivers can see better at night during rain and snow storms (see illustration). A prototype has been built according to this design. In the rest of the year, we will develop algorithms for this hardware prototype.

Expected Outcomes/Impacts

The project presents a revolutionary new design for vehicular exterior lighting. The prototype built in this project already can be used for many tasks to help drivers – reduce glare, highlight signs and obstacles. Developing and incorporating this prototype into commercial vehicles is a longer term goal that is certain to reduce crashes and increase driver safety.

Expected Outputs

TRID

Individuals Involved

Email	Name	Affiliation	Role	Position
srinivas@cs.cmu.edu	Narasimhan, Srinivasa	Robotics Institute	PI	Faculty - Tenured

Budget

Amount of UTC Funds Awarded

$55000.00

Total Project Budget (from all funding sources)

$55000.00

Documents

Type	Name	Uploaded
Final Report	Toward_Smart_Automative_Headlights.pdf	March 21, 2018, 8:29 a.m.
Publication	157_-_2013_IEEE_International_Conference_on_Computer_Vision.pdf	Jan. 10, 2019, 6:37 a.m.
Publication	Toward Smart Automotive Headlights for Safe Driving.	Nov. 28, 2020, 10:24 a.m.

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