Development of a System to Study the Impact of Headlight Glare in a Driving Simulator

We report on the development of a realistic dynamic simulation of oncoming headlamp glare in a driving simulator. To our knowledge, no such simulation had been attempted or achieved previously. The simulation is based on superposition of a bright LED display through a beam splitter on the simulator screen and synchronizing the illuminated LED position to the image of the simulated oncoming car. LED brightness is adjusted to result in the level of light that such headlights would cause in the driver’s eyes, enabling the testing of glare effect on drivers of different ages and impact (reduction or increase) of various vision devices.