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Adaptive driving beam (ADB), which was first homologated in the ECE world (ECE 123) in 2012 has changed the automotive Front Lighting philosophy completely. Whereas we currently live with separate low beam and high beam features, also used in a combined way, we will have in the future a camera driven light distribution, which is a kind of modified high beam light pattern. ADB is a camera based lighting system, which enables the driver to achieve at night nearly high beam visibility without glaring oncoming or proceeding vehicles and road users. Once the presence of other vehicles is detected the headlamps change the light pattern and block the light where the oncoming or proceeding vehicles are located. The typical low beam light distribution with given and specified cutoff line will only be used in small speed areas. In US this development was well recognized and NHTSA is preparing a way to enable and approve the ADB systems with specific boundary conditions also for the US market.

Since 2012, adaptive driving beam (ADB) was homologated first in the ECE world (ECE 123). The idea behind is a camera based lighting system, which enables the driver to achieve at night nearly high beam visibility without glaring oncoming or proceeding vehicles and road users. Once the presence of other vehicles is detected the headlamps change the light pattern and block the light where the oncoming or proceeding vehicles are located. Light sources are typically High Intensity Discharge (HID) bulbs, but today also first LED applications are visible. For SAE, the definition of the parameters and the requested regulation changes to allow such systems are in progress. The paper reports about an extensive study executed in Germany at TU Darmstadt to investigate not only the improvement in visibility for the driver with such systems, but also evaluate the disability and discomfort glare for other road users.

In 2003, the first AFS systems have been launched in various vehicles. The movable headlamps should improve the visibility mainly in curved roads. Especially the comparison between the Xenon (HID) - version and the Halogen system was noticed with considerably high interest. The paper describes the experimental study we did in order to find out, what the real benefit on the road for the consumer is going to be. The evaluation shows, that even with the AFS Halogen solution we can report a higher visibility in curved roads than with the static Xenon system. Additionally, the introduction of static bending lights and cornering lights in combination or as a stand alone system will be considered. The subjective impression for a better visibility for the drivers when parking or making U-turns could be clearly detected by the experimental survey. Nevertheless, the dynamic bending lights are getting the highest priority for the drivers at night.

In most cases of night time driving the low beam light function is used for the road illumination in front of the car. This conventional low beam function has a constant light pattern: no matter whether the driver is actually driving on a straight or curvy road, whether the road is wet or dry, always the same beam pattern is applied. Test experiences of the last years prove that a headlamp with an „adaptive light pattern” having different optimum light pattern adapted to different driving situations should give a better illumination than the conventional constant low beam pattern which can only be a compromise. In this paper an outline of the basic idea of the „adaptive light pattern” is given. Different driving situations and their corresponding optimum light pattern, basic technical concepts and the legal situation regarding homologation of such an advanced lighting system will be discussed.

In the last years the possibilities to design the light pattern of automotive headlamps have been increased drastically. Headlamps are playing an important role in the design of a vehicle. Today there are various computer programms allowing a detailed layout of the light distributions, other than simple parabolic reflectors with a given light pattern. The questions: where to put the extra light and: what is the ideal distribution of the light volume on the road have been raised quite often and where mainly discussed between experts in lighting. In this paper we report the results of a customer inquiry about the criteria of a good light pattern and the ratings of different light distributions given by some concrete examples. We will report the results by comparing the answers of different customers with the theoretical ratings. In this paper we will concentrate on the application of low beam, the most important light function in night-time driving.

A new automotive headlamp has been developed under the designation LITRONIC (Light Electronics). In order to improve the light quality and to increase driver safety on the road, a gas-discharge lamp was chosen as the light source instead of the conventional incandescent bulb. The projector headlamp is well-suited for the application of the LITRONIC system. Especially in the US market, there is currently a potential interest in applying projector headlamps in series production. Compared to conventional headlamps, advantages can be seen in the flexibility of this kind of headlamp from the styling view point. In this paper, newly developed solutions for projector headlamps from Bosch will be presented, for HID as well as for incandescent bulbs. Applications for low beam and for high beam are included. By means of concrete examples, the improvements in light quality compared to conventional systems will be demonstrated.

In order to further improve motor vehicle lighting, headlamps with instead of the current incandescent. lamps are being developed at Robert Bosch GmbH, Stuttgart, under the designation LITRONIC (Light Electronics). Compared to headlamps with conventional bulbs, the LITRONIC headlamp achieves a greater luminous efficacy, thus contributing to a considerable improvement in safety on the roads. Function, construction and initial system experiences from a testing of samples of the new headlamp system will be described.