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posted by
martyb
on Tuesday January 15 2019, @11:27PM
from the blinded-by-even-more-distant-oncoming-traffic dept.
from the blinded-by-even-more-distant-oncoming-traffic dept.
Most people don’t turn on their car’s headlights and think, I wish they were brighter. Shuji Nakamura is not most people.
The Nobel Prize-winning illumination scientist has spent the past five years developing a laser-based lighting system. His company, SLD Laser, says the new design is 10 times brighter than today’s LED lights, capable of illuminating objects a kilometer away while using less power than any current technology. And unlike a regular, dumb headlight, the laser can potentially be integrated into current and forthcoming driver-assistance systems.
Do headlights need to be brighter?
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The Headlight of the Future Is a Laser
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Two is not equal to three, even for large values of two.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 16 2019, @03:02AM (2 children)
Actually, you hit on the brilliance (pun intended) of using lasers for down-road illumination. Ordinary headlights have wide beamspread, so, indeed, if there is enough light reaching 1km downroad to see by you will be blinding anyone intercepting that light at 10% of the distance. With lasers, beam divergence is controlled and the relative brightness close up and far away is much much less different.
I doubt the early prototypes are working this way, but I think a great way of using lasers for downroad illumination would be for the lasers to emit uniformly from a tall bar the width of the vehicle, so they are a continuous relatively soft beam with very little divergence. If they are coming from two point sources there will still be higher intensity near the sources, but not as dramatic as with conventional bulbs.
Picture an illumination pattern which only reaches the ground 20' away to the left and maybe 50' away to the right, but 2500' away straight ahead. As implied in the summary, picture any illumination pattern that tickles your fancy - lasers can do that.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @04:01AM
In Germany, checking the headlight alignment is part of the regular inspection. I've never had that done in the USA. So in the future, bad alignment will mean a laser to the face.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @12:24PM
Wide beamspread? Please: there's been enough work on headlight divergence - they are a solved problem. No need risking our eyesight hundreds of times each night, just because someone is too jittery to drive without seeing miles and miles of road ahead.