Intelligent Rain Disappearing Headlights Now Available
The Engineer
Safety is one of the primary reasons why engineers work so hard, always improving systems to incorporate better designs and to make it safer to use and handle. While science is rapidly coming up with more and more gadgets, the first and top priority is safety of the users. Recently, Intel and Carnegie Mellon University have jointly introduced a new idea which they have also executed as a prototype. The key idea is to facilitate the driver during a rainy day. The gadget comes as a combination of a camera and projector. The camera works to find the individual drops and the projector blackens them to provide the driver with a rain drop free view which is safer! This is a dream come true for drivers who have to frequently drive during heavy rainfall! If you have ever experienced such a scenario, then you must have wished for those raindrops to vanish and let you drive in peace. So, what we are looking at is a combined project from Intel and Carnegie Mellon University, as mentioned earlier. The Headlight projects not a single beam but rather a grid of several tiny beams. The camera behind the projector looks for raindrops and the processor is used for determining the paths of these raindrops. The projector then helps in blocking out the parts of image where the raindrops are. So the grid where raindrops come in gets blocked by darkening of pixels, resulting in a rainless view.
Intel has stated that this gadget will be available for commercial consumption in about a decade. Since its a prototype, there are imperfections such as some drops still getting through and being visible. However, it is still quite a leap forward in automobile industry!
