Global automotive supplier, Hella has been at the forefront of the development and manufacture of vehicle lighting systems since it was founded 115 years ago.
Innovations include sensor-controlled headlamps with adaptive front lighting systems, in 2006 and camera-controlled headlamps, which made their debut in 2009.
Four years ago Hella introduced the world’s first camera-controlled headlamps with glare-free high-beam lighting.
The original system employed xenon bulbs as their light source, today several individually controlled LED light sources, known as the Matrix LED System, are cleverly integrated in glare-free high-beam headlamp lighting systems.
Transforming vehicles
Adaptive technologies have arguably transformed vehicles over the past decade and adaptive safety systems have made driving safer and more convenient.
ESP (Electronic Stability Program) for example, has made a major contribution to the prevention of skidding and subsequently reduced the number of road accidents.
One of the most important recent adaptive technology developments can be found in the area of vehicle lighting, where global automotive supplier Hella has been at the forefront.
Improving safety
Support for the development of adaptive lighting technology, which uses ‘intelligent’ LED headlamps, has come from CLEPA’s (the European Association of Automotive Suppliers) LightSightSafety initiative, which commissioned a study by the Technical University of Giessen to compare this new technology with a vehicle fitted with a conventional low-beam headlamp system.
Among its findings, the study cited the detection of a hazard on the road 105 feet, or 1.4 seconds, sooner when driving at 50mph.
In the latest systems, a camera mounted behind the windscreen at the base of the rear view mirror detects the vehicles ahead that are in the same lane as well as oncoming vehicles and relays this information to the headlamp control unit.
The system then forms dark tunnel areas within the high-beam headlamp cone to dynamically ‘single out’ or ‘exclude’ vehicles in real time.
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