Analysis of Effective Flicker Light Patterns to Improve the Pedestrian Detectability from a Driver for an Intelligent Headlight System

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze headlight flicker patterns to improve a pedestrian's detectability from a driver. Recently, headlights are becoming capable of selectively projecting light on a pedestrian in addition to the normal forward projection. However, it is still not analyzed how the light should be projected to effectively improve the detectability of the pedestrian. Firstly, we confirm the effectiveness of the flicker light projection in a real-world setting. Next, we conduct an experiment in ambient light conditions using a driving simulator to find the effective flicker pattern in each condition. As results, we confirmed that the flicker light projection contributes to improve the pedestrian's detectability from a driver and effective fundamental frequencies of flicker lights are different depending on the ambient light conditions.