An optical axis control apparatus is provided with a relative-road-surface-angle calculating unit which calculates a relative horizontal plane angle being an inclination angle of a vehicle with respect to a horizontal plane by using an output value of an acceleration sensor provided on the vehicle and calculates a relative road surface angle being an inclination angle of the vehicle with respect to a road surface by integrating an amount of change of the relative horizontal plane angle while the vehicle is stationary, a relative-road-surface-angle correcting unit which obtains braking information indicating an operation state of a brake device provided on the vehicle and corrects the relative road surface angle for a change in the braking information, and an optical axis control unit which controls an optical axis of headlights provided on the vehicle using the relative road surface angle corrected by the relative-road-surface-angle correcting unit.

To provide a technique capable of accurately obtaining the attitude of a vehicle in the pitch direction. A device controls the optical axis of a vehicular lamp in accordance with an attitude change in pitch direction of the vehicle having (a) an angle calculation part which obtains acceleration associated with the vertical and the horizontal direction at a predetermined time interval, obtains a first and a second acceleration related to the vertical and the horizontal direction by eliminating the gravitational acceleration component from each acceleration, calculates a vehicle traveling direction acceleration based on the two accelerations, and obtains a vehicle attitude angle based on a correlation between the acceleration and the vehicle traveling direction acceleration, and (b) an optical axis setting part which generates a control signal for controlling the optical axis of the lamp based on the vehicle attitude angle, and provides the control signal to the lamp.

A vehicular lighting assembly for compensating for the change in light emission angle due to load on a vehicle. The assembly included at least one lighting element, an actuator associated with the or each lighting element for adjusting a light emission angle of light emitted therefrom relative to the vehicle with which the vehicular lighting assembly is associated, and an actuator housing in which the actuator is housed. A vehicular-pitch-determining sensor is then arranged to indirectly determine a pitch of the vehicle, and associated with a controller for controlling an actuation of the actuator in response to a vehicular pitch as determined by the vehicular-pitch-determining sensor. A vehicular lighting system, pitch-compensation actuation unit, motor vehicle and method of altering the angle of light emission from the headlamps of a motor vehicle are also provided.

A headlamp for vehicles that has a light source unit. Numerous light sources and/or light guides are controllable individually. A sensor unit for detects headlamp status data and/or vehicle environment data. A control unit for controlling the light sources and/or light guides generates a predefined light distribution for the headlamp. The range of the headlamp can be adjusted on the basis of sensor signals from the sensor unit. The control unit contains a control element for the light sources and/or light guides for projecting a guide marking onto a road surface. The control unit contains a compensator that compensates for deviations in the guide marking on the basis of a sensor signal generated by the sensor unit.

Disclosed is an auto aiming and auto leveling control system which simplifies initial aiming of a headlamp, and links an aiming process to a leveling process of the headlamp, so as to reduce manufacturing costs and to enable process automation.

To accurately identify a vehicle state. An apparatus identifies a vehicle state and includes a controller connected with an angular velocity sensor and an acceleration sensor, where the controller acquires acceleration per unit time along a vehicle's longitudinal direction axis from the acceleration sensor, determines acceleration variation over a certain period of time, acquires angular velocity per unit time around vehicle's roll axis from the angular velocity sensor, determines the angular velocity variation during the certain period of time, and identifies the vehicle as a first state when the acceleration variation is greater than a first threshold value and the angular velocity variation is greater than a second threshold value, and identifies the vehicle as a second state when the acceleration variation is less than the first threshold value and the angular velocity variation is less than the second threshold value, and outputs the identified result.

To provide a technique capable of accurately obtaining the attitude of a vehicle in the pitch direction. A device controls the optical axis of a vehicular lamp in accordance with an attitude change in pitch direction of the vehicle having (a) an angle calculation part which obtains a first acceleration value, a second acceleration value, and a vehicle speed, at each predetermined time intervals respectively, calculates vehicle traveling direction acceleration based on the vehicle speed, further obtains a first slope and a second slope from the correlation between the vehicle traveling direction acceleration and the first and the second acceleration value respectively, and a vehicle attitude angle based on the ratio between the two slopes, and (b) an optical axis setting part which generates a control signal for controlling the optical axis of the lamp based on the vehicle attitude angle, and provides the control signal to the lamp.

To improve the reliability of an automatic leveling control device for a vehicular lamp using acceleration sensors. The device variably controls optical axis of the lamp according to the attitude change in a vehicle including (a) a sensor abnormality determination part which determines if a first acceleration sensor is abnormal based on first acceleration values detected by the first sensor, (b) an angle calculation part using the first accelerations value to obtain an attitude angle when the sensor abnormality determination part determines there is no abnormality in the first sensor, and uses second acceleration values detected by a second acceleration sensor when the sensor abnormality determination part determines there is an abnormality in the first sensor, and (c) an optical axis setting part which generates a control signal for the optical axis based on the attitude angle obtained by the angle calculation part, and provides the signal to the lamp.

A headlight control apparatus (1) for performing control on a headlight device (7) which includes a pair of headlight units (3, 5) each including a light source (9) and an image forming section (16R, 16G, 16B) capable of forming an image and disposed in a light path of light from the light source to illuminate light (101, 105) for projecting the image onto a road surface, wherein the headlight control apparatus forms the image in the image forming section such that a first image (103) projected onto the road surface by one of the headlight units includes a second image (107) projected onto the road surface by the other headlight unit.

Methods and systems for vehicle safety lighting are disclosed, including a system having a multi-axis accelerometer that detects acceleration of the vehicle along a first axis and a second axis normal to the first axis, and outputs a corresponding first axis acceleration measurement and a second axis acceleration measurement. A controller is coupled to the multi-axis accelerometer, and to an array of light emitter elements (LELs). The controller is configured to determine a vehicle deceleration, based at least in part on a combination of the first axis acceleration measurement and second axis acceleration measurement, and to detect the vehicle deceleration exceeding a brake light threshold and, based at least in part on the detection, output a deceleration light signal to the array of LELs. Digital filtering prevents operation of the safety lighting by accelerometer outputs unrelated to axial deceleration, such as will occur upon encountering a hill, or, in the case of a motorcycle or the like, leaning into a turn.