Abstract:The introduction of adaptive front lighting systems for vehicles has increased road safety and drivers' comfort significantly within the last years. A next step in this development is the realization of higher resolution systems to further increase the functionality of vehicle headlamps toward fully adaptive front lighting systems. In this paper, we present a short overview on highly dynamic front lighting systems and the essential technologies for their realization. Different approaches are compared and evaluated regarding their applications for headlamp systems. As an example for on-road projection systems, a laser-based scanning unit is set up and evaluated.

High-resolution vehicle headlamps are the technological way to intelligently illuminate the traffic area to increase safety and comfort. For the technical realization of these headlamps, different technologies come into question, which are the subject of intensive research at universities and among the manufacturers. We present an overview of the possible technologies and analyze their potential for use in high-resolution headlamps. Furthermore, we explain how the design of the optical system for the different technologies can be made. Another part of this paper is the comparison of published prototypes of high-resolution headlamps and the compilation of key properties.

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High-resolution vehicle headlamps represent a future-oriented technology that can be used to increase traffic safety and driving comfort. Typically, selective absorbing of light using a spatial modulator like DMD, LCD or LCoS creates the light distribution of such headlamp systems. A similar effect can be generated by using LED arrays. Its additive principle generates light only in specific segments if necessary. In general, these arrays can be distinguished between conventional LEDs arranged in an array and micro pixel LEDs. Conventional LED arrays characterize by the design (THT or SMD) with typically a few millimeters edge length. In contrast, a micro-pixel LED uses COB technology, in which individual LED dies are packed in a single housing directly next to each other at a distance of a few microns. By increasing the array resolution, the challenges in designing an optical system for high-resolution headlamps rise. High efficiencies and contrasts call for small, accurate lens geometries and negligibly scattered light effects. Due to limited installation space and manufacturing tolerances, compromises have to be made. Ideally, the optics have to be accurate enough to image each pixel of the micro LED with high contrasts and high efficiency and still be too blurry to project the gaps between each pixel. This results in small distances between LED and optics and therefore in difficult to manufacture radii of curvature. In this paper we specify the challenges to implement micro pixel LEDs in headlamp systems, as well as present the controllability of scattered light effects of these systems.