Control Strategies and Fail-Safe-Concepts for Adaptive Lighting Systems

In the next few years a lot of car manufacturer will offer adaptive headlamp systems as an option or as standard equipment for their products. These headlamps will provide an advantage concerning comfort and traffic safety for the driver, but on the other hand for a general acceptance of all traffic participants the level of glare has to be controlled carefully.

Developing an adaptive headlamp new techniques have to be installed in the headlamp and in combination with the electronic control unit, which analyzes various sensor information, a complex system of different lighting modules and moving optical parts will be introduced in future headlamps. The high level of complexity requires for the case of failure special concepts, which have to be fixed in the development process of the headlamp with the target of finding effective and cost saving solutions. Some main aspects of this control strategy are presented and discussed in this paper.