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Introduction

The book takes you, the reader, through the story of automotive lighting. You will find out how vision works, what the industry does for lighting and what conflicts remain to be solved. The book concludes with an outlook for lighting to improve our vision when driving, particularly at night. There are many questions we have asked ourselves in order to provide answers. The following dialogue between a (fictional) lighting expert, symbolized by , and an engineer or educated layperson, interested in the makings of successful automotive lighting systems, symbolized by , introduces the questions that motivated us. The answers you will find in more detail in the main chapters of the book.

How Vision constructs reality Man is not a nocturnal creature!

As a car driver I would like to know more about automotive lighting. I know many people who dislike driving at night. I am sure good engineering could improve the situation. But what does a chapter on visual perception have to do with it? How can a good lighting system be designed without understanding of the needs of the driver? Automotive lighting is a means to an end, not an end in itself. How can you design a lighting system unless you know how the drivers visual system works, what it is capable of, and how the brain constructs the world from visual input? Wait a moment! That sounds too complicated and philosophical for me. The brain constructs the world We open our eyes and see. There is a picture, a set of pixels, rather like a camera, and that is it, isnt it? I am afraid it is not quite that simple. Vision is much more than just the set of pixels. The eye and our visual system do not work like a camera.

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If it is not camera, what is it? It is a complete recognition system. It is programmed by nature, culture and our experience to model the world around us. Are you trying to tell me that we dont see pixels, but instead have a complete model of the external world in our heads? That is almost true. Except it is by no means a complete model. We usually construct reality in our head that is limited to what we personally find relevant. What is relevant to you might not be relevant to me? What is relevant to any one of us is determined first by the capabilities of our visual system and later by the sensitivity filters in our value system. But surely, we are all made out of the same matter, have the same pigments in the receptor cells of our eyes and the same hardwiring? The early image-processing taking place in the retina is indeed similar for everyone, but once the visual cortex is reached differences can emerge. Evolution has favoured a brain that is not just hard wired, but one that can be programmed extensively in our growing years. This means that only people who were exposed to the same array of stimuli during their early years can be expected to have similar perceptions. Does that mean that my great-grandfather was adapted only to driving at the speed of the horse-drawn coach? Yes it does. Every generation learns afresh. Part of the environment will be the same as the previous generation. But if we consider the influence of computer games on the visual system of the next generation, we will be surprised to find that our children have better visual acuity and faster peripheral responses than we do.

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Automotive Lighting State-of-the-Art Luckily we already have lights on our cars

The automobile was invented more than one hundred years ago, and automobile lighting has evolved for decades. Can you point out the most important milestones with respect to vision and lighting? Yes I can. But I will not only tell you about the historical development, but also try to give you an idea of the history behind the history. What do you mean by The history behind the history? The evolution of technologies has never been a straightforward process, even if there seems to be continuity. Technological developments are typically influenced by changing environments and by the evolution of related technologies. Often progress is chaotic in nature and a small detail decides success or failure. Can you give an example? Lets take signature lighting. Do you remember the years before the turn of the millennium and the accompanying doom and gloom in the run up to the year 2000? Do you remember the worries that computers would not function with the new dates? Some people worried that the sun would not rise. One of the car manufacturers very prominently fixed light guides to the headlamps of the cars and sold them as angel eyes. The public went crazy about the feature. I understand that it is important to know about the details of automotive lighting systems, but I have never come across a comprehensive description of the state-of-the-art. Lets look at how a headlight is made. Lets see what makes up a working signal light. We should also look at interior lighting. Headlights are important to the appearance of the vehicle. How much does the designer have to take into account the overall styling and design of the vehicle?

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Today all lights are an integral part of vehicles. They are part of the exterior design and make use of the vehicle electronic architecture. But what can be done is constrained by a wide range of standards and regulations It sounds as if lighting has to serve a lot of different masters, from design, via safety all the way to politicians. You are right. It is very difficult to understand what is going on without knowing about the conflicts and constraints that underlie the evolution of any technical system. It is therefore, a good idea to think about what the competing considerations are in the design of automotive lighting. They are not fuel efficiency against low emission, as in engine design, or ride comfort versus road holding as in the case of suspensions. The most obvious conflict in automotive lighting design is between good visibility for the driver and minimum glare for oncoming drivers. There are numerous other conflicts, such as effectiveness v. regulation, appearance v. cost and ease of maintenance v. complexity.

Fundamental Problems with Automotive Lighting Lighting systems today are a compromise
Why is it so difficult to design a good lighting system? Because many different situations have to be taken into account. For example, old people have different visual capabilities than young people, so ideally they should have appropriately adjusted lighting. Lighting also has to work in a variety of environmental and weather conditions. You mean fog lights? Adverse weather is just one of many conditions where the driver would welcome more support than our current lighting systems provide. I did not mean the difficulties caused by different weather conditions. Rather I wanted to express my surprise that no one seems to

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have a concise idea about what good lighting means in contrast to bad lighting. Are there no clear design guidelines and regulations for the engineer? There certainly are, but they are deficient in a number of ways. For example, they are all expressed in terms of the performance of the visual system during daytime; but at night when automotive lighting is used, the performance of the visual system changes. Then there is the question of good for whom or under what circumstances. For example the lighting necessary to detect a pedestrian wearing dark clothes is different from that if the pedestrian is wearing white clothes. What is good lighting depends on what needs to be seen. To add to the confusion, what is good lighting for one driver may be bad lighting for the driver coming the other way. So there really is no simple performance measure for automotive lighting? You are probably right that there is no simple performance measure for vehicle lighting. It could be argued that a lighting system that meets current regulations is good lighting, but that means accepting the limitations of current regulations. The real problem is that the effectiveness of automotive lighting is determined by many factors, many of which are outside the control of the lighting designer. The solution to this is lighting that can adapt to the conditions more intelligent lighting.

Automotive Lighting and Mechatronics New technologies paired with a better understanding of the real needs lead to better systems
Technologies are developing in many areas, for example high speed data communication, plasma displays or crash simulations. Surely there must be a chance to improve lighting systems and to make them more intelligent and user friendly. Yes, you are right. We have barely scratched the surface when it comes to development of intelligent lighting systems. All the ingredients are there for intelligent lighting systems i.e. systems that have

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some notion of what is happening around them and can assist the driver, whilst avoiding conflict with other traffic. Is this not complexity for the sake of itself? Why should we make things more complicated than we really need? Wouldnt it be far easier to use invisible light? Many important lessons were learned when polarised light, ultraviolet light and finally infra-red light were used. The big headaches for all these lighting systems were the avoidance of adverse affects for other road users, the missing of some targets, and the presentation of images to the driver. How should an intelligent lighting system present images to the driver? The governing principle of any user interface in an intelligent lighting system is make it familiar. The driver should be able to interact with the interface in his natural environment. The system should not challenge the driver excessively i.e. the rule is do not overwhelm the user with irrelevant information. Finally the information should be presented in intuitively understandable chunks. Does this mean I will soon be seeing cars with grumpy or smiley faces? You are not far off. We know that the visual system recognises contours long before it checks colour. Lighting can take advantage of this. Does that mean we all need to study how human vision works? Yes. Lets start again at the beginning of the book