Ford develops an insane lighting technology

New lighting technology aims to enable drivers to see everything important at night. Everything

The bulb in Ford’s research facility in Aachen must be it very bright, seeing as how new lighting technologies generated will make night driving very safe. The new and developing advanced lighting technology will enable drivers to easily see potential hazards when driving at night without the aid of night vision.

Building upon Ford’s Adaptive Front Lighting System and Traffic Sign Recognition, the Camera-Based Advanced Front Lighting System can widen the beam at junctions and roundabouts to throw light on potential hazards that are not in the direction of travel. The system also uses GPS to give more illumination on bends and dips on a chosen route. Where GPS information is not available, the forward-facing video camera mounted in the rear-view mirror base detects lane marking and predicts the road’s curvature; the lights will act upon the changing conditions accordingly.

The next step is to store information from the camera in the navigation system, so when the road is used again, the headlights will adapt automatically.

Another tech that’s coming out of Aachen, which is still in pre-development, is Spot Lighting. The system uses an infra-red camera in the front grille to simultaneously locate and track up to eight people and bigger animals, including larger dogs, at a range of up to 120 metres. LED spotlights, located next to the fog lamps, will swivel to highlight the closest two objects on the road. Two of the objects will be highlighted with either a yellow or a red frame, depending on proximity and danger level, will be displayed inside the car.

Ford mentions that these new technologies, more so for the Camera-Based Advanced Front Lighting System, will be available in the very near future.

CHRIS NG