Vehicle Lamp Controller Timing to Prevent Camera White Clipping
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing vehicle lamp systems face issues with white clipping when capturing irradiation patterns on road surfaces, making it difficult to reliably grasp road surface conditions due to high brightness ratios.
Innovation Solution
A controller that controls lighting units to prevent irradiation during camera capturing periods and allow light irradiation during non-capturing periods, ensuring complementary operation to avoid white clipping and enhance road surface condition grasping.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Illumination intensity
If the irradiation unit continuously irradiates light on the road surface, then the visibility of the irradiation pattern is improved, but white clipping occurs in the camera image making it difficult to grasp road surface conditions
Solution Approach 1:
The irradiation unit operates in periodic cycles, alternating between irradiation periods and non-irradiation periods. During non-irradiation periods, the camera captures images of the road surface without interference from the irradiation pattern, allowing accurate detection of road surface conditions. During irradiation periods, the pattern is visible to drivers. This periodic operation resolves the contradiction by separating the two functions in time.
Solution Approach 2:
The controller coordinates the operation timing so that the irradiation unit stops irradiating just before the camera is scheduled to capture an image. This preliminary cessation of irradiation ensures that the road surface condition can be captured clearly without white clipping, while maintaining overall visibility during non-capturing periods.
2Measurement precision
If the camera continuously captures images, then the road surface condition monitoring is improved, but the irradiation pattern becomes invisible during capturing periods due to white clipping
Solution Approach 1:
Both the camera and irradiation unit operate periodically with synchronized timing. The camera captures images during non-irradiation periods when the irradiation unit is off, ensuring clear visibility of road surface conditions without white clipping. The irradiation unit then activates to provide visible patterns for driver guidance during non-capturing periods.
Solution Approach 2:
The system maintains continuous useful action by ensuring that the irradiation unit is always active during non-capturing periods, providing continuous guidance to drivers. The camera continuously monitors by capturing periodic frames, and the coordination ensures that useful functions (visibility and monitoring) are maintained without mutual interference.
Data Source
AI summary
To make it possible to grasp the road surface condition more reliably when the road surface on which the irradiation pattern is formed is captured by a camera. A controller for lighting control installed in a vehicle that is equipped with a camera that captures the surroundings of the vehicle, a monitor that displays images captured by the camera, and an irradiation unit capable of irradiating light on a road surface within a range that can be captured by the camera, and in which the controller performs operation control of the irradiation unit, where the controller performs operation control of the irradiation unit so that it prevents the irradiation unit from performing light irradiation during each intermittently occurring capturing period of the camera, and causes the irradiation unit to irradiate light during a non-capturing period between the capturing periods.