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©2013 Old City Publishing, Inc.
Published by license under the OCP Science imprint,
a member of the Old City Publishing Group
J. of Active and Passive Electronic Devices, Vol. 00, pp. 1–8
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Intelligent Automatic High Beam
Light Controller
Mohammed Alsumady and Shadi. A. Alboon*
Hijjawi Faculty for Engineering Technology, Electronics Engineering Department, Yarmouk
University, Irbid, 21163, Jordan
E-mail: [email protected] and [email protected]
In order to make the driving at night time a safe experience and more
friendly to the other drivers on the road an automatic high beam light
controller is needed. This paper presents, a simple, low cost and easy to
install, design for an intelligent automatic on/off high beam light controller. The proposed design was implemented using the required hardware
and components. The experimental results show that the controller provides the driver with the required automatic control; by turning on and off
the high beam light when facing other drivers. Moreover, the system will
turn off the high beam light if there is enough lighting on the surrounding
environment such as when driving inside cities.
Keywords: Automotive engineering, High beam light, Intelligent controller,
Automatic On/Off controller.
1. INTRODUCTION
Car accidents data shows that the rate of night time accidents is higher than
that for the day time [1]. This fact may be endorsed to number of parameters,
among them, is the poor lighting conditions at night that reduce the visual
capability of the driver. For that reason it is harder at night to see the road
environment parameters such as warnings, cars, pedestrians and traffic signs.
At night it is very difficult to determine the nature of objects by human eye
from long distance. This due to the fact that night time diminishes the advantages of the colors and contrasts of objects.
*Corresponding author: [email protected]
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Mohammed Alsumady and Shadi. A. Alboon
Hence, all vehicles are equipped with a headlight system to grant a safe
lighting for night time driving or at any other situation. Usually the headlight system contains two reflector lamps the low beam and high beam
lights. Typically the driver manually switches between the low and high
beams. The high beam lights provide better visibility range over the low
beam light. Nevertheless, the high beam lights generate a dazzling effect
on the other driver that encounters it. Thus, the drivers must toggle from
high beam to low beam lights in order to circumvent dazzling other
drivers moving in the opposite way. On the other hand low beam lights
create less dazzling effect, but with a reduction of quality and range of
visibility.
Although using the high beam provides more safety margin, drivers use
the high beams much less frequently than they need or can [2]. Even if the use
of high beam is justified, drivers only use it about 25% of the total required
time [3]. The two major reasons for this behavior are the manual nature of
switching between the high and low beam. The second reason is the fear of
dazzling other drivers and therefore causes catastrophic accidents. Therefore,
an automatic controller to switch off the high beam lights when facing other
vehicle is considered necessary. Such feature will make the driving experience more convenient in the night time. Moreover, it makes the road more
friendly to the other drivers on the road.
Lately high beam light controllers have been discussed in literature. Most
of the proposed system are based on complex combination of cameras and
image processing techniques in order to detect the vehicles and control the
high beam light [4]-[8]. In [4] an image sensor is used to have picture of the
road and then a classifier based module is used to identify the targets. While
the authors of [5] used a multiple target classifier in order to classify vehicles
and other objects. An input from a forward looking video camera combined
with an automated learning algorithm was used to control the high beam light
[6]. An intelligent headlight control (IHC) using support vector machine
learning engine is discussed in [7]. Moreover, a simulation environment to
test the headlight system to find its performance for different conditions is
presented by [8]. Furthermore, there are different commercial systems for
high beam light controllers, for instance Mobileye [9] and Conti [10], they
installed in some vehicles brands. One of the early deployed systems is Gentex [11], which use a tiny imaging array with separate lenses and receptor
arrays.
The aim of this research is to design a simple and yet intelligent control
unit to automatically switching Off/On the high light beam considering the
incoming traffic and the available lighting on the road especially inside cities.
This control unit can be mounted to all vehicles to insure the high beam
switching depending on the light density without the influence of the user
(the driver). The novelty of the proposed design resembles in the simple and
low cost system with effective results.
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Intelligent Automatic High Beam Light Controller
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The rest of the paper is organized as follow: section 2 presents the system
concept and design. In section 3 the experimental results are discussed.
Finally section four discuses the conclusions.
2. SYSTEM CONCEPT AND DESIGN
The concept of the system basically can be divided into two parts: the light
detection and the high beam off/on control circuit. Figure 1 shows the flow
chart of the system operation concept. In order to design a simple low cost
control system, a simple approach is needed to detect the light of the incoming traffic or the ambient lights in the road.
A light dependant resistor (LDR) is used (some literature refers to it as
photoresistor) as a light sensor. The resistance value of the LDR is changing
according to the impinging light on it. Typical LDR has a linear relation with
the incident light such that if the light density is increased the resistance of
the LDR is decreased [12]. Other electronic components such as a transistor,
Figure 1
System concept flow chart.
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Mohammed Alsumady and Shadi. A. Alboon
Figure 2
The proposed system schematic diagram.
operational amplifier (used as comparator), relay, diodes and resistor are used
to build the electronic control circuit as shown in figure 2. Detailed analysis
for the circuit shown in figure 2 can be found in many electronic circuits
books [13]. This can be discussed briefly as following: when the resistance of
the LDR changed by the incident light or the ambient light; the comparator
output will be either high or low depending the value of the LDR resistance
as shown by the following equation:
R _ LDR


Vx = 
× 12V  R _ LDR + 150 K 
If Vx > 6.2V then the comparator output is high, Transistor on, relay is on and
the high beam light is on. On the other hand if Vx < 6.2V then the comparator output is low, Transistor off, relay is off and the high beam light is off. The
value of the 150 KΩ variable resistor can be adjusted to increase or decrease
sensitivity. Consequently, increases or decreases the action distance. It can be
easily shown that the value of the LDR resistance that just make the high
beam light on is when Vx = 6.2V therefore the value of R_LDR is 160 KΩ.
3. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
In order to verify the design shown in figure 2, the system is implemented
using the required components as shown in figure 3. It can be seen that the
circuit is installed on a bread board for the preliminary tests. The circuit is
then installed on a real life test drive at night time. The performance results of
the system are shown in table 1.
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Figure 3
The experimental implemented test circuit.
The table shows that as the incoming car distance from the test car
decreases, the luminance of the incoming light is increasing and the LDR
resistance decreases. It can easily seen from the table that the relation between
the incoming light an LDR resistance is linear as stated before. It is noteworthy to mention that the high beam light on the test car is turned off when the
incoming car was about 230 m away.
Using this observation with the data from table 1 it can be seen that the
LDR resistance is between 100 KΩ - 180 KΩ. This agrees with the calculations done in the pervious section were the calculated threshold value for
LDR resistance was 160 KΩ. The difference between the experimental and
theoretical resistance value may be attributed to the tolerances of the components used in the circuit.
The following figures 4–7 show the experimental results for the system
and the measured values of the LDR resistance values at different distances.
Figure 4 shows the relationship between the incoming light luminance and
Table 1
The experimental test results for the high beam light controller
Distance (Meter)
Luminance (Lux)
R (Ω)
300
25
180K
200
50
100K
150
100
50K
100
400
10K
50
3000
1K
25
12000
100
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Notes
Like sunrise on clear day
Like full day light
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Mohammed Alsumady and Shadi. A. Alboon
Figure 4
The relation between the incoming light luminance and the distance.
distance from the test car. While figure 5 shows the relation between the LDR
resistance and the distance between the two cars. From figure 5, we can see
at about 230 m distance the measured value of the LDR resistance is about
125 KΩ. The relation between the LDR resistance and the incoming light
luminance is shown in figure 6. Both the light luminance and the LDR resistance relations with two cars distance are plotted on figure 7.
Figure 5
The relation between the LDR resistance and the distance.
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Intelligent Automatic High Beam Light Controller
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Figure 6
The relation between the LDR resistance and the incoming light luminance.
Figure 7
The relation between both the incoming light luminance and the LDR resistance with the
Distance.
4. CONCLUSIONS
We have presented a simple, low cost and easy to install design for an intelligent automatic on/off controller for the high beam light. This system will
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Mohammed Alsumady and Shadi. A. Alboon
provide the driver with a stress free driving experience at night time. The
proposed automatic on/off controller will turn off the high beam light when it
detects an incoming car lights. Therefore, the driver will be no more afraid of
dazzling other drivers when he uses the high beam light when he needs it. The
system was built and tested on a real car driving at night time. The experimental results show that the system can detects an incoming car lights from
about 230 m away. This distance will provide a safety margin from being
dazzling other drivers and easily can be adjusted. Moreover, the system turn
off the high beam light when there is enough lighting on the road such as
inside cities and fully lighted roads.
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