CAN Enabled Automatic Headlight Levelling System

Driving at night is a dangerous activity that necessitates maximum driver awareness for safe operation of a motor vehicle. A relatively cheap and effective way to increase a driver’s situational awareness is by proving the best view of the road and existing obstacles possible. Until the perfection and proliferation of night vision systems in cars this will be accomplished using headlights. There are two common problems with headlights, first is that many of them are improperly adjusted either blinding on coming drivers or providing a poor view of the road ahead. The second problem is headlights on the majority of road vehicles, once adjusted, remain fixed while in operation. They are thusly unable to adapt to conditions. The solution to this is to offer dynamically adjusting headlights that can be aimed by the driver in the cabin and then will automatically compensate for dips in the road, inclines, and the cars loading. This project seeks to produce such a system that can be retrofitted to existing vehicles with two modules, the control module consisting of an accelerometer sensor to measure the change in the vehicle tilt, and user input. The second module will be the headlight module, with stepper motor controlled headlight tilt, and a tilt sensor for feedback. The two modules will communicate over a CAN network. This system will result in an increase in useful light emitted from the vehicles headlights while simultaneously decreasing glare for other road vehicles, which will significantly improve night time road safety. Introduction According to the Washington State Fatal Car Accident Statistics the night-time automobile fatality rate is consistently three to four times greater than the daytime rate. Many factors enter into the equation that result in the increased rate of accidents, which gives all the more reason to take every measure to mitigate as many risks as possible. A major problem of night-time driving is situational awareness. Maximizing night-time awareness involves providing the maximum amount of information to the driver about road conditions and surrounding obstacles, which for the foreseeable future involves providing the best possible lighting to the driver, while at the same time minimizing glare for oncoming traffic. The problem with good road lighting on the majority of cars on America’s roads today lies with the fact that they are manually adjusted, and many drivers never adjust their headlights properly. According to an AAA traffic safety study headlight glare can negatively impact driver vision for up to 10 seconds. With this in mind, even properly aimed headlights will fail to compensate for changing car loading, bumpy road conditions and inclines resulting in increased glare, and decreased effective road lighting. This project proposes to develop a SAE compliant automatic headlight levelling system that will adjust itself to an angle set by the user and automatically compensate for changes in the angle of the vehicle. This system should result in improved lighting for the vehicle occupants and for other road users, with the added benefit of allowing the driver to adjust headlight angle on the fly to adapt to road conditions.