Osram Pixel Front Lighting

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Excerpts from an interesting Nov 2016 blog post at Osram

https://www.carlightblog.com/2016/11/11/perfect-pixel-light-3072-leds/

Quote:
It’s likely to be the next big thing in car lights. Recently unveiled headlights with more than 3,000 light emitting diodes from Osram can specifically illuminate any part in front of the car or leave it dark. This makes it possible to create high-resolution glare-free high beam without any mechanical parts.

You can already buy glare-free high beam. The same goes for matrix lights. So what’s new about these headlights which have now been introduced by a consortium made up of Daimler, Osram, headlight manufacturer Hella, semiconductor specialist Infineon and the Fraunhofer Institute? Well, this is pixel light, which can be considered as matrix light with a much higher number of LEDs. While Vauxhall’s Astra illuminates the road with 16 LEDs per headlight and Mercedes’ current E-Class with 84, the test headlights which are close to production use a massive 3,072. Of course, individually they’re not as powerful as the ones in existing headlights. Taken together, they pretty much exceed everything that’s been around so far though. Each of the LEDs in the pixel light headlights provides a luminous flux of one lumen, totaling around 3,000. That corresponds to the level of xenon light which so far has been the benchmark in this category.

...Integrating more than 3,000 LEDs into just one headlight was a technical challenge. Such a big number can’t be wired in a conventional way. That’s why the LEDs from Osram are put together directly with a control chip from Infineon. The technology for this sophisticated connection was developed by the Fraunhofer Institute. 1,024 light emitting diodes have been combined in one array, with three [very small] arrays being used in one headlight. The light is projected onto the road using a lens, which, along with the entire integration into the housing, is provided by Hella.
 
For the early adopters an accident that damages a headlight will result in the car being totaled by the insurance company.
 
Is this really a problem?

Until all cars come with fully automatic headlights, that allow the dumbest-lowest-common-denominator driver to avoid the all-too-common scenario of them thinking their headlights are on because the dash lights are on, we DON'T NEED PIXEL LIGHTS.
 
They should just leave the front of the car super clean with marker lights or very small DRLs and use night vision windshields!
 
Originally Posted By: DBMaster
For the early adopters an accident that damages a headlight will result in the car being totaled by the insurance company.

Right?
 
Originally Posted By: Colt45ws
Originally Posted By: DBMaster
For the early adopters an accident that damages a headlight will result in the car being totaled by the insurance company.

Right?


My point is that they sound very expensive. so, that was a joke - kind of a reach, I know.
 
Quote:
...For smartphones, computer screens and TVs it’s obvious that the more pixels there are, the better it is. There’s a similar trend for car lights…
...High resolution is what’s wanted, with many thousands of pixels. Four technical approaches are currently being developed…
... In matrix light, which is already in series production, a maximum of a few dozen light sources in the form of individual LEDs are used. Pixel light is expected to provide several thousand light sources – or even tens of thousands... Both matrix light and pixel light is ideal for glare-free high beam…
...But how do you get so many pixels from car headlights? One approach comes from cinema and projector technology. It’s called Digital Light Processing (DLP). Many thousands of tiny mirrors are switched electronically and release light onto the screen – or in the case of a car headlight – onto the road. Because of the mirrors the technology is also called Digital Micromirror Device (DMD). The actual light source can be LEDs or laser diodes…
...The second method for realizing pixel light relies entirely on semiconductor lasers. It’s based on a micro-electromechanical system (MEMS), in which the laser writes the individual pixels as lines on a type of screen in the headlight. You can roughly compare it to an old TV picture tube. The resulting “image” is then projected onto the road…
...Maybe the third approach will be just right. It’s called Liquid Crystal Display High Definition (LCD-HD) and is completely new. A liquid crystal display lets the light from light emitting diodes through or blocks it. According to engineers at headlight specialist Hella, 30,000 light points, in other words pixels, can be created with this technology…
...By the time DLP, MEMS or LCD-HD create the first pixels in a production car, at least one or two years will pass. The fourth solution, µAFS, may be quicker. It stands for Micro Advanced Frontlighting System. It’s been more than two years since Osram introduced it together with Daimler and headlight manufacturer Hella. It offers around 3000 pixels per headlight which can all be individually controlled, with each pixel corresponding to one LED...


https://www.carlightblog.com/2017/09/22/pixels-galore/
 
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