How the Audi A8’s ultra-advanced headlights can “revolutionize” safety Car News

Such is the versatility of DMH technology, it can also project warning signs onto the road as part of the headlight beam.

The new A8 projects a warning triangle with an exclamation mark inside onto the road ahead of the driver. Using live traffic information pulled by an internet link through “the cloud”, this warning symbol appears for three seconds, alerting the driver to dangers ahead such as traffic jams or a dangerous road surface.

According to Johannes Reim, lighting specialist at Audi, it is very complicated to get this going, including the projection of warning lights on the road surface, because you have to negotiate with each country.

Even so, Audi says it can consider more innovations in using advanced lighting systems to communicate with pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers. One idea is to use front and rear lamp projections to inform cyclists of the driver’s intentions or to project a warning light that indicates the car door is about to open. to open.

Audi is also working with suppliers to enable rear light clusters to offer information to the following vehicles. The use of more advanced OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes) in the rear light clusters has allowed Audi to use more individual light segments in each cluster.

At the moment, these multi-segment rear clusters allow the A8 driver to choose from four different rear light signatures (five on the new Audi S8) and they can also send a proximity indication to a following vehicle using data from the rear parking lot of the car. sensors.

Future OLED clusters will grow from 10 segments to 50 segments and possibly many more segments. Because OLEDs provide evenly diffused light that can be fine-tuned, Audi’s lighting designers envision rear OLED clusters made up of many tiny segments, paving the way for symbol presentation on subsequent vehicles, such as several danger warning triangles or animations that reflect speed. braking, for example.

Audi is also considering projecting warning symbols, such as an illuminated snow symbol, from the advanced OLED lights onto the road surface using weather data downloaded from the cloud, warning following vehicles of conditions. dangerous.