Hyundai Mobis Co., an automotive parts under South Korea’s auto giant Hyundai Motor Group, announced on Thursday that it has developed next-generation headlamps that show real-time road situations on the road.

The HD Lighting System developed by Hyundai Mobis is a technology that visualizes driving information in text or shapes and projects it on the road surface. One feature of the system is that it can proactively prevent pedestrian accidents as the camera sensor recognizes pedestrians while driving along a remote alley and shows a virtual crosswalk on the road when the car stops. This materializes so-called communication lighting technology that not only communicates with pedestrians with emergency lights or a horn, but also with headlamps.

Furthermore, when a car approaches a construction zone, the system displays “under construction” symbol that is 1.5 meters big 15 meters ahead of the driver and can also inform the driver of the speed limit. The technology also increases visibility and helps prevent accidents at night, allowing the driver to easily recognize when the car approaches a speed bump and where highway entries and exits are while looking ahead.

While there are other convenient safety technologies that inform users about driving information like GPS navigation and head-up display, a device that projects driving information on the vehicle‘s front glass, the HD Lighting System is seen as different in that it considers not only drivers but also enables communication between drivers and pedestrians.

The HD Lighting System has about 25,000 micro light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with a width of 0.04 millimeters, even thinner than human hair. This is 250 times as many LEDs as those installed in LED headlamps currently being mass produced, enabling the lamp to control light more sensitively as it has a much higher number of LEDs.

HD Lighting System is also equipped with a digital micro mirror device (DMD), which is an ultra-precise controller that reflects light using microscopic mirrors measuring just 0.01 mm. Lights emitted from densely-packed LEDs are reflected using 1.3 million digital mirrors to project desired shapes and symbols on the surface of the road.

By Lee Yu-sup and Yoon Yeon-hae

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]