Projected Light Signals for Autonomous Vehicles

Vehicle lighting system that uses projectors and sensors to improve safety and visibility for vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists. The system uses LED and laser light sources positioned on the vehicle that can project information, warnings, and illumination on the road when the vehicle is in motion or stationary. The projections can follow moving objects, surround pedestrians, provide lane markings, and communicate messages. The system also provides spot illumination and reduced glare to improve visibility. It uses sensors to adapt the lighting based on road conditions, weather, and surroundings. The goal is to enhance safety and reduce accidents by providing targeted, optimized lighting to drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists.

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A system to improve driver awareness during autonomous driving by dynamically adjusting the light emitted by the vehicle based on the driving mode. The system has a light emission device, control device, and mobile entity (vehicle) with the ability to change the driver's level of involvement in monitoring the surroundings during autonomous driving. The light emission device has multiple light sources that can be individually controlled to create different light patterns. The control device coordinates the light sources to display specific sequences and intensities based on the driving mode. This provides visual cues to the driver to indicate when they should pay more attention or take over control. For example, flashing lights might indicate an imminent handover request. The system aims to maintain driver engagement and confidence in autonomous driving by dynamically communicating the vehicle's driving state.

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Communication methods for autonomous vehicles to improve safety and understanding between vehicles, pedestrians, and other road users. The methods involve displaying icons on the vehicle's rear and front facing displays to indicate its state, intent, and context. The icons are updated based on real-time conditions like intersection state or pedestrian presence. This provides a visual cue to following vehicles and pedestrians about the autonomous vehicle's actions. It helps prevent misunderstandings and conflicts when the vehicle can't use traditional signals like horns or lights. The displays can also project lights onto pedestrians or road to further enhance safety.

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Projecting visible content outside autonomous vehicles to communicate intent and improve road safety. The system uses onboard sensors to gather routing and road agent data around the vehicle. It generates projection data with content based on that information. Projectors outside the vehicle display the content on surfaces like roads. This helps other road users understand the AV's actions and predict behavior. The projection parameters adjust based on sensor feedback to account for moving objects.

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Semantic mapping plays a critical role in enabling autonomous vehicles to understand and navigate complex environments. Instead of computationally demanding 3D segmentation point clouds, we propose efficient on RGB images projection the corresponding LIDAR measurements semantic OctoMap. This study presents comparative evaluation different methods examines impact input image resolution accuracy environment reconstruction, inference time, computational resource usage. The experiments were conducted using an ROS 2-based pipeline that combines LiDAR clouds. is performed ONNX-exported deep neural networks, with class predictions projected onto data calibrated extrinsic. resulting semantically annotated clouds are fused into probabilistic representation OctoMap, where each voxel stores both occupancy information. Multiple encoderdecoder architectures various backbone configurations evaluated terms quality, latency, memory footprint, GPU utilization. Furthermore, comparison between high low resolutions assess trade-offs model real-time applicability.

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Scalable and switchable optical antenna array architecture for coherent LIDAR systems that allows solid-state beam steering without mechanical moving parts. The architecture uses an array of optical antennas with an optical splitter and an optical switch. The switch selectively provides an input signal to one or more of the antenna arrays. This allows multiple antenna arrays to cover a wide field of view without scanning mechanisms. A lens collects the light and the arrays steer the beam electronically.

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Enhancing safety and trust for autonomous vehicles by projecting road notifications that convey the vehicle's future path and nearby areas where other road users can still move. The notifications are displayed on the road ahead of the vehicle using projectors. They consist of a boundary image showing the safe area around the vehicle's planned trajectory where other road users can coexist, and a trajectory image indicating the vehicle's path. The boundary image changes shape and size based on the vehicle's distance. This provides other road users a clear understanding of the vehicle's intended path and the surrounding space they can use.

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Autonomous vehicles are one of the key components smart mobility that leverage innovative technology to navigate and operate safely in urban environments. Traffic light detection systems, as a part autonomous vehicles, play role navigation during challenging traffic scenarios. Nighttime driving poses significant challenges for vehicle navigation, particularly regard accuracy lights (TLD) systems. Existing TLD methodologies frequently encounter difficulties under low-light conditions due factors such variable illumination, occlusion, presence distracting sources. Moreover, most recent works only focused on daytime scenarios, often overlooking significantly increased risk complexity associated with nighttime driving. To address these critical issues, this paper introduces novel approach using LNT-YOLO model, which is based YOLOv7-tiny framework. incorporates enhancements specifically designed improve small poorly illuminated signals. Low-level feature information utilized extract small-object features have been missing because structure pyramid neck component. A SEAM attention module p... Read More

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LiDAR system with adaptive scanning techniques to improve frame rate, accuracy, and safety by dynamically varying the temporal scanning pattern based on object distance. The system uses an array of optical emitters with an objective lens to scan the field of view. A controller routes laser light to the emitters based on distance to objects. This allows focusing more scans on nearby objects for higher resolution and frame rate while reducing scans of distant areas.

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Practical, efficient beam steering for applications like LIDAR using arrays of waveguides with resonators that can be actuated to steer the beams without moving parts. The waveguides receive light normal to the surface they are on. Actuating the phase response of the resonators steers the beams without significant amplitude changes. This allows forming multiple steerable beams simultaneously from a single waveguide array. The beams can be detected separately to determine their origins and arrival times for improved accuracy. A monolithic SLM and microlens array can provide wide FOV steering.

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Structured light navigation aid for autonomous vehicles that uses emitted structured light patterns to improve navigation in GNSS-denied environments. The aid has a movable structured light emitter that projects patterns onto surfaces. A receiver captures reflected light to calculate navigation info. This provides a fixed, drift-free source vs. GNSS-prone drift. The emitter can change direction and pattern. This allows scanning to find suitable landing spots based on features.

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This paper presents a cost-effective and innovative method for determining visually communicating vehicle's steering angle using VL53L0X distance sensor microcontroller-controlled LED array. The system replaces conventional sensors, offering scalable solution aimed at reducing road accidents due to uncommunicated vehicle turns. number of LEDs activated is directly proportional the angle, providing real-time visual cue trailing drivers. approach promotes enhanced safety while maintaining affordability ease integration.

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This study presents the design and implementation of a vehicular visible light communication (VLC) system that establishes an expandable VLC-based chain network within tunnel environments to facilitate exchange driving dynamics data, such as target speed acceleration, between consecutive vehicles. The primary aim proposed is improve road safety by reducing risk collisions hard braking events, particularly in tunnels, where limited visibility absence global positioning signals hinder drivers ability accurately assess conditions. A key feature its adaptive beam alignment mechanism, which dynamically adjusts orientation light-emitting diode (LED) module on transmitting vehicle based rhw wheel angle data estimated inertial measurement unit sensor. adjustment ensures continuous reliable link with surrounding vehicles, even when navigating curves tunnel. Additionally, can be integrated into actual vehicles minimal modification utilizing built-in lighting (i.e., LED taillights), offering cost-effective scalable solution achieve objective.

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In-vehicle device and driving trajectory projection method for warning nearby vehicles and pedestrians of an autonomous vehicle's intended path. The device projects a suggested driving trajectory onto the road ahead or behind the vehicle when it turns, reverses, or accelerates from a parked position. It calculates the trajectory based on turn signals, vehicle speed, and surroundings. This allows other road users to see the autonomous vehicle's intended path and react accordingly.

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Compact automotive high and low beam projection lighting assembly with improved shape and light dispersion. The assembly uses a collimating lens followed by a micro lens array with a focusing lens, light shielding interlayer, and projection lens in sequence. The micro lens array allows a compact size compared to conventional lenses. The light shielding interlayer on the focal plane of the projection lens reduces dispersion by blocking light rays that diverge too much. This improves the shape and uniformity of the light beam.

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Welcome light for vehicles with dynamic projection capability. The light uses a configuration of LEDs, lenses, film, and projection lenses to project customized light patterns. The LEDs emit light that is condensed by lenses and passes through a grid and patterned film. This light with pattern information is then projected using dedicated lenses. The light pattern is created by splicing the projected beams from each LED. The control module can independently turn on/off the LEDs to dynamically project different patterns.

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A non-tilted dynamic projection system for vehicles that provides large, dynamic projection patterns without tilting the lamp. The system uses multiple non-tilted projection channels with multiple micromirror arrays (MLAs) and lenses to create a composite pattern. This allows projecting a larger image without tilting the lamp, as each channel contributes to the overall projection. The composite pattern is formed by synchronously driving the MLAs in each channel. This enables dynamic projections without the need for lens tilting or multiple MLA units. The system also uses multiple lenses in each channel for aberration correction to improve image quality.

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A lighting device for vehicles that allows flexible positioning of the light source relative to the projection optics. The light source is arranged on one side of the inner focus of the projection optics at a distance from it, instead of directly at the inner focus. Transfer optics between the light source and inner focus image the source to the correct position. This allows moving the light source further away from the inner focus, enabling more compact lighting devices. The transfer optics map the light source to the inner focus location in the projected image.

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Projection module for switchable patterns in projection devices like car headlights. The module has a rotating structure with multiple fixed pattern units. A driving mechanism rotates the structure to select and present different patterns. The patterns are projected by passing light through them using fixed components like condensers and imagers. This allows customizable projection effects by switching between the embedded patterns. The rotating structure with fixed patterns replaces a single fixed pattern component.

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Sequential projection signal lamp for vehicles that can produce smooth sequential lighting images on the road using a two-layer projection lens setup. The lamp has a light source with multiple LEDs, shields, and lenses to collimate and converge the light. The two-layer projection setup allows better collimation and correction than a single-layer lens. The LEDs can be static or changing, and the overlapping projections from adjacent changing LEDs create a smooth sequential image. The lamp projects a clear, collimated road image with higher LED efficiency compared to single-layer lenses.

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