Headlamp Aiming on Motor Vehicles in Production and Service - Current and Future Outlook

Headlamp aiming is important for the safe operation of vehicles in road traffic. This is because aiming has an important influence on glaring of the oncoming driver as well as the visibility distance of the driver, seeing objects on the road, road guidance and road traffic signs.

The paper presents statistics of headlamp aiming in the field and modern factory headlamp aiming techniques for European and SAE light distribution. Furthermore standards and guidelines for headlamp aiming and headlamp aiming facilities are discussed.

Controlling aiming is a matter of combining PRACTICAL REGULATIONS with QUALITY AIMING APPARATUS: To implement this in practice an electronic headlamp aimer called LUMINOSCOPE was developed. This aimer objectively checks headlamp aiming and beam quality of all headlamp types of Europe and USA. With different parameters it is used for vehicle aim inspection, vehicle production line aiming, headlamp manufacturing quality control and in service or repair workshops.