Vehicle certification requirements generally fall into 2 categories: self-certification and various forms of type approval. Self-certification requirements used in the United States under Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) regulations must be objective and measurable with clear pass / fail criteria. On the other hand, Type Approval requirements used in Europe under United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) regulations can be more open ended, relying on the mandated 3rd party certification agency to appropriately interpret and apply the requirements based on the design and configuration of a vehicle. The use of 3rd party certification is especially helpful when applying regulatory requirements for complex vehicle systems that operate dynamically, changing based on inputs from the surrounding environment. One such system is Adaptive Driving Beam (ADB). ADB is a headlamp system that allows all or portion of the high beams to be used nearly continuously during night time driving. This is accomplished by the system automatically dimming or shadowing a portion of the high beam pattern around other road users, allowing the remaining high beam to remain illuminated.
ADB systems are allowed in Europe under UNECE Type Approval Regulations but are not specifically included in FMVSS regulations. To regulate ADB under FMVSS, objective test specifications along with measureable pass/fail requirements must be developed. To facilitate the development of these specifications and requirements, a Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) task force was established to create a self-certification proposal which could be adopted into FMVSS, with the additional goal of harmonizing these requirements with UNECE Regulations to the extent possible. This paper describes the strategies used by the SAE Task Force to develop self-certification requirements for ADB headlamp systems based on the UNECE type approval requirements, the challenges encountered, and how those challenges were addressed.