Automotive Night Vision -- enhance the perception in the darkness

As the application of car assistance system, one of the most important mission must be increase the driving safety. Driving at night is a serious challenge for almost every driver, specially under the unlighted road conditions. Although in the previous article I have introduced an adaptive highbeam assist which is able to increase the perception of drivers at night, there are also some drawbacks of it which couldn't be avoided easily. Such as when the approaching vehicles against you coming, their strong headlamps could influence your perception ability. That means the adaptive highbeam assist works well if every vehicle follows its rule. Another disadvantage is the direction dependence of the headlamp. It's not sufficiently impressible for all directions as daytime. So there is a so-called Night-Vision System appearing to help the users see the natural-looking images of the road, which is often regarded as animate and inanimate objects and increase the seeing distance in darkness or poor weather.

Usually the Night Vision system is divided into two kinds as active systems which is able to offer the higher resolution image, superior picture of inanimate objects and work better in warmer conditions, the other is passive systems with greater range and higher contrast for living objects.

Nowadays the near-infrared technology or infrared technology is the one of the most popular technology for the Night Vision system. This system use a thermal camera that is sensitive to the infrared wave, with a display projecting a virtual image of the road scene onto a specific screen. With the help of such system the driver is able to distinguish the pedestrian or other vehicles more easily, but the image contrast is generally poorer for cool, inanimate objects, such as lane markings, signs and so on. And later a laser-based night vision system uses near-infrared wavelengths to improve the visibility which guarantee the whole components are constructed inside the car to avoid weather and hazard influence.

So apparently the camera technique plays an important role in the Night Vision systems as which wavelength or which wave mode is proper for the infrared or near-infrared light camera. But the Display is also a relevant component of the system. Usually there three most used displays for the night vision illustration. First is the most common computer display LCD. Second is also widely used -- navigation system or vehicle information screen. The last type is the Head-up Display which is also a significant technique for the car assistance system, and later I would like to introduce it in an extra article. Below is another cool video about Night Vision system from Youtube. Enjoy it, please!

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