A cooperative adaptive lighting system for motor vehicles in which a vehicle transmits its geographic coordinates and receives similar coordinates from other vehicles, pedestrians, and stationary warning devices. Using the coordinates, the vehicle computes distances, and relative position more specifically, to those entities. When the distances become sufficiently small, indicating that the entities fall within headlight range, the vehicle alters its headlight beams to either (1) throw more light on an entity, (2) reduce light reaching the entity as appropriate, or (3) change a lighting pattern as appropriate.

A computing device for a vehicle exterior light control system is described. The computing device includes one or more processors for controlling operation of the computing device, and a memory for storing data and program instructions usable by the one or more processors. The one or more processors are configured to execute instructions stored in the memory to automatically operate vehicle headlights responsive to a location of the vehicle.

The present invention is generally directed to methods and systems of estimating visibility around a vehicle and automatically configuring one or more systems in response to the visibility level. The visibility level can be estimated by comparing two images of the vehicle's surroundings, each taken from a different perspective. Distance of objects in the images can be estimated based on the disparity between the two images, and the visibility level (e.g., a distance) can be estimated based on the farthest object that is visible in the images.

An information processing system includes a vehicle and a server that is able to communicate with the vehicle. The server stores weather information indicating the weather. The vehicle receives the weather information from the server and acquires an image in which a scene outside the vehicle is captured when an operating state of an onboard device is not a prescribed operating state corresponding to the weather indicated by the weather information. The vehicle or the server detects the weather from the image. The server updates the weather information to indicate the weather detected from the image when the weather detected from the image and the weather indicated by the weather information do not match and provides information to a client using the updated weather information.

An LED controller includes: an absolute value calculator to calculate an initial light intensity value for a desired light output curve; a fade-in calculator to calculate a first light intensity value; and a fade-out calculator to calculate a second light intensity value. The LED controller also includes processing logic configured to: select one of the fade-in calculator and the fade-out calculator as a selected incremental value calculator, based on a directional indicator that indicates whether a fade-in light output effect or a fade-out light output effect is requested, initialize coefficients of the absolute value calculator and the selected incremental value calculator with a set of coefficient values associated with the desired light output curve, and output a set of voltage levels to a set of pulse width modulation (PWM) generators that output a set of PWM signals, which control light output of a string of LEDs.

A vehicle headlamp comprising at least one light-emitting diode is proposed, wherein said at least one light-emitting diode is configured to operate as a detector of a light source.

A motor vehicle includes headlamps having a plurality of LED light sources, one or more processors, and a memory storing instructions. One or more processors executing the instructions are enabled to receive first data, including at least map data, indicating a road curvature upcoming along a road on which the motor vehicle is traveling. The processors are also enabled to determine a light change, the change adapting a light pattern of the headlamps in at least one of color, intensity or spatial distribution to increase light in a direction of the road curvature ahead of the motor vehicle and shaping light based at least in part on the road curvature. The processors are further enabled to control at least a first plurality of the LED light sources to provide light based at least in part on the determined light change and prior to the motor vehicle reaching the road curvature.

A method, system and non-transitory computer readable medium for suppressing autonomous vehicle external human machine interface (eHMI) notifications to prevent confusion or distraction of a road user. The suppression conditions are based on situations where the eHMI notification is redundant, not necessary, can be simplified or should be modified due to weather or light intensity. The eHMI notifications can be suppressed on selected displays and enhanced on others. The eHMI notifications can include text and icons, flashing lights, color or light patterns, which can be modified or suppressed based on the determination that the eHMI notification will confuse or distract the road user. At a four-way stop intersection, the eHMI notification can be suppressed until the autonomous vehicle has the right-of-way. The autonomous vehicle can form a mesh network with connected vehicles at the intersection and broadcast a group eHMI while requesting that the connected vehicles suppress their eHMIs.

A headlamp unit based on a PBS includes a lens and a beam splitter. Viewed from a reverse light path, parallel light is refracted twice by an incident surface and an emergent surface of the lens and then converged in at least two focuses through the beam splitter. Each focus corresponds to a light path system, and the light path systems may be turned on simultaneously or separately to obtain a corresponding headlamp light pattern. Through beam combination of the PBS, two optical systems may achieve different illumination light shapes through on-off combination of light sources, and the two optical systems do not interfere with each other. The PBS obtains at least two accurate focus positions for the focuses of the lens, and an ideal light pattern may be accurately obtained. An upper beam light pattern may partially cover a lower beam light pattern.

A headlight control system controls a headlight of a moving object. The moving object includes the headlight including a plurality of light emission units, and an imaging unit configured to capture images of circumstances in front. The headlight control system includes an irradiation pattern controller configured to perform control for changing at least one of presence or absence of light emission and a degree of light emission of each of the light emission units to change an irradiation pattern of the headlight to one of a plurality of irradiation patterns, an imaging controller configured to perform control such that the imaging unit captures the images of the circumstances in front for each of the irradiation patterns to acquire captured images, and a learning unit configured to learn an irradiation pattern suitable for the circumstances in front based on captured images captured for each of the irradiation patterns.