[N0Chill 335i]

This is so amazing...

http://www.wimp.com/headlighttechnology/

[arya328xi]

That looks pretty sweet. Now if only they could put half that effort into making the electric steering have some feedback.

[KeepitClassy]

Heard they were having trouble bringing this into the U.S. because of old headlight laws. I also read somewhere that the new headlights would differentiate from the older xenons by having the new BMW 4 series concept Halos. The ones that look like a signature.

[marshall834]

That.Is.Awesome.

[Yvette]

looks like more repair bills down the road to me lol

[Game]

Badass.

[williamf]

Very cool.

[nomis_nehc]

This technology actually has been implemented by Audi first, and BMW is trying to catch up.

I have many questions though as far as real world usage goes: how many vehicles can it detect/monitor in real-time? When it creates a tunnel of vision, wouldn't the high beam light still bother the driver in front of view by blinding their sideview mirrors? Is the adjustment based on real-time calculation of how wide the vehicle in front is and speed traveling? Lastly, how does it actually "see and recognize" vehicles ahead?

[ErvGotti]

Pretty cool video I wonder though what it does in passing situations and multilane roads with no lights. Does it just turn off the high beams completely?

[KwlAznKid]

Originally Posted by e90sexion

looks like more repair bills down the road to me lol

exactly what I was thinking

[adv241]

This is awesome

[135Pats]

If this system is similar to that of the new range rovers, its absolutely horrible. Constant highbeam on/off spam. Distracting and useless to the driver, extremely obnoxious to everyone oncoming.

Oh and its gunna break. And it will be expensive.

[Hyper_545i]

Volvo is using this as well. I thought it was developed by Volvo first?

[pits200]

How does the headlight differentiate between a car and lets say an object where you want the highbeams on it?


Say a deer runs into the road, you want the light to shine on it and not create a tunnel, you want the beam to stay on it.

[GOTMH8N]

Originally Posted by e90sexion

looks like more repair bills down the road to me lol

god that's what the first thing I thought of hahaha


very very cool though

[spicytofu]

so now i can leave my highbeams on 24/7

[Teemo Panda]

Its awesome but approval from the US DOT is still pending before they could use the adaptive feature on US public roads.

[CitrusE92]

A few thoughts... like the concept, but...

Does anyone else feel drawn into the tunnel when it forms? I could kind of feel myself wanting to wander into the tunnel, which would put me into a collision with the on-coming vehicle.

Does anyone else find that activating and dimming the high beams as traffic approaches on long trips tends to keep them more alert? I find that to be the case.

How are stationary object handled? The scenario I am thinking of is when there is a vehicle turning from a perpendicular side road. If the lighting has tunneled as I pass him, I've just temporarily blinded him. What if that vehicle is a police car running radar?

Love the look of the lights themselves, but I probably would not be getting this feature.

[Titanium3Series]

Repair bills I do not see to be as big of an issue in comparison to the lights we already have. Other than a sensor and the software for your car it shouldnt be that much different in parts to what is already out there.

[TheSubmariner]

Originally Posted by Titanium3Series

Repair bills I do not see to be as big of an issue in comparison to the lights we already have. Other than a sensor and the software for your car it shouldnt be that much different in parts to what is already out there.

[alexwhittemore]

Originally Posted by nomis_nehc

I have many questions though as far as real world usage goes: how many vehicles can it detect/monitor in real-time?

Certainly the answer is implementation-specific, but there's no intrinsic limit if they're using computer vision. But the real point is it doesn't matter. You only need to know about one proximal car in the oncoming direction and one proximal car in front of you. Any behind those are automatically taken care of.

Of course, this breaks down when you're on the highway with lots of lanes - there's a limit to the angle either light can deflect, and it looks like the passenger-side light is intended to line the road anyway, so that wouldn't do you much good in the far left lane of a wide highway (for LHDers, I mean, flip if you're in jolly ol' Engalun).

But obviously this. See my final point below.

When it creates a tunnel of vision, wouldn't the high beam light still bother the driver in front of view by blinding their sideview mirrors? Is the adjustment based on real-time calculation of how wide the vehicle in front is and speed traveling? Lastly, how does it actually "see and recognize" vehicles ahead?

Maybe yes maybe no, but probably not. The question here is margin of error. As long as you don't cast a beam onto the mirrors directly, the driver won't be bothered by what's reflected (since there isn't much incident light to reflect - keep in mind mirror flash bothers you because you're effectively looking straight into the headlight - if the headlight isn't straight at the mirror, it's not straight into your vision, and it isn't bothering you). So as long as there's minimal beam incident on the mirrors, that's the point. The real question is, how do you ensure no beam hits the mirrors, and the answer is you make the margin on the tunnel width wide enough.

As for how to decide width and location, easy. They're using computer vision, which means they're tracking point sources of light. In the case of the car in front of you, they have the added advantage of being able to single out a very specific color, red. So they paint a dot in the camera's field of vision on each tail light, then make sure they're projecting headlight only outside those two dots.

Same deal with the headlights. An abnormally high-luminosity point-source is tracked as a headlight. Hopefully they also do some other smart things, like only track sources that come in horizontal pairs of two to avoid reflective signs triggering the system. Although maybe they don't - high beam glare off a clean sign is almost as bad as oncoming highs.

Originally Posted by 135Pats

If this system is similar to that of the new range rovers, its absolutely horrible. Constant highbeam on/off spam. Distracting and useless to the driver, extremely obnoxious to everyone oncoming.

I'm sure you're right, and I'm sure it does get annoying. But that leads to the final point below.

Originally Posted by pits200

How does the headlight differentiate between a car and lets say an object where you want the highbeams on it?

Say a deer runs into the road, you want the light to shine on it and not create a tunnel, you want the beam to stay on it.

Computer vision is pretty cool, you can do statistical analysis on the image to calculate believed point sources of light that aren't due to you. In image processing, the concept of 'energy' relates to how quickly visual parameters change with angle, so left-right or up-down translation in the image. A deer will be very high contrast compared to its surroundings - it stops lots of light while the empty space around it doesn't reflect nearly as much, depending on range to whatever's next in the field of view (ground, trees, whatever). You'd say that the outline of the deer has very high energy. But it's not a very concentrated high energy. A headlight, on the other hand, is a pinpoint of very high energy that rapidly diminishes. If you know what you're doing algorithmically, the two are very easy to differentiate.

A deer's eyes, maybe less so, but given that it's a pretty common case to design around (animal and animal eyes in the path), they've probably considered it. It's certainly doable if you know to plan on it.

Originally Posted by CitrusE92

A few thoughts... like the concept, but...

Does anyone else feel drawn into the tunnel when it forms? I could kind of feel myself wanting to wander into the tunnel, which would put me into a collision with the on-coming vehicle.

I was thinking myself that yeah, it seems like it'd get kind of mesmerizing and distracting. But then I feel like I'd get used to it after the novelty wore off.

Does anyone else find that activating and dimming the high beams as traffic approaches on long trips tends to keep them more alert? I find that to be the case.

Kind of, but it's the same way with cruise control - there are people who can remain alert enough to drive with cruise control on, and there are people who can't. If it makes it too easy for you to check out as a driver, knowing that is your job.

How are stationary object handled? The scenario I am thinking of is when there is a vehicle turning from a perpendicular side road. If the lighting has tunneled as I pass him, I've just temporarily blinded him. What if that vehicle is a police car running radar?

I'm not quite sure what you mean. If the turn-out vehicle is on the opposite side of traffic, the system will work fine to avoid lighting the driver up. If it's on your side, I'm not sure it'd do as well.

And the difference between a stationary object and a stationary car here is pretty big, I think (at least how I'd have gone about designing the system) - if the cop car has lights on, no problem. If not, you'll probably flash it.

Final point:
Seems like an awesome feature, but it does one thing and one thing only - automatically avoid blinding drivers in situations when you'd have your high beams on anyway and mind them manually. It does seem to, additionally, make it possible for you to travel behind a car with your high beams on.

This isn't going to be useful on the highway. Like 135Pats suggests, I'm sure it'll flip on and off and shift here and there continuously as the controller is overwhelmed by piles of cars to track at all angles. If it's smart, it'll just shut the lights off, or else not do anything at all in that case (maybe you WANT to flash someone on the busy highway).

The point here isn't to let you leave your highs on 24/7 while driving in the dark. Why would you want any of the FOV lit with highs on a busy multi-lane highway anyway? If there are too many other cars such that this would flip on and off all the time, you've already got plenty of light.

Basically, it seems like all the operational disadvantages here stem from trying to use the highs when you ought not to be using high beams at all in the first place.

[CitrusE92]

[QUOTE/]

I'm not quite sure what you mean. If the turn-out vehicle is on the opposite side of traffic, the system will work fine to avoid lighting the driver up. If it's on your side, I'm not sure it'd do as well.

[/QUOTE]

So, imagine yourself on the 4 hour drive between Wilmington and Charlotte, NC. State highway with very few patches of overhead lighting. It's rural, the potential for deer and wildlife crossing your path is rather high. This is where you would want to use your high beams.

So your cruising down the road and come to a intersection where a driver is stopped on your left side. As you approach this intersection, there is a vehicle approaching in the opposite direction. The 'tunnel' is formed for the approaching vehicle by diverting the left headlight to the left. I'm assuming that it would point right at the driver attempting to make the turn. And knowing how powerful our high beams are, that could get uncomfortable.

Again, no idea if the new system would track this, but nothing in the video implied how stationary objects were handled.