A Night Drive Simulator for the Evaluation of a Predictive Advanced Front Lighting System

Summary form only given. This paper introduces a Virtual Reality-based night drive simulator that visualizes the complex lighting characteristics of automotive headlights in high detail and in real-time on a PC-based system. The user drives a simulated vehicle over a virtual test track at night, the vehicle's motion directly influences the lighting direction of headlights, and the effect of the vehicle dynamics on the lighting can be evaluated directly in the simulator. The system is connected to the control algorithms of a P-AFS component to control the headlights swivelling for a close-to-reality simulation of a P-AFS based lighting system during the simulated night drive. That way, good combinations of the design variables can be found, based on virtual night drives in the simulator system, and the number of real test drives can be reduced significantly. Promising combinations of the design variables then can be validated in a test vehicle during a real test drive a night.