Automatic Vehicle High-Beam Headlamp Control System

Automating the task of high beam switching will significantly improve nighttime driving safety, especially for pedestrians, by providing the maximum amount of illumination possible for a given driving condition while not exposing an oncoming or preceding driver to an uncomfortable level of glare. While there have been many prior attempts to perform this task, these systems have been plagued by their inability to detect distant taillamps and by their tendency to switch to low beams for reasons other than the presence of other vehicles. This paper will describe a new device which overcomes these limitations through the use of an image processing system which detects other traffic and switches the high beams accordingly.