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Automotive Industry

Night vision comes to Cadillac - 2000 DeVille visibility system

Automotive Industries, Sept, 1998 by Nina Padgett

After a decade of development, GM springs its Night Vision system on the 2000 DeVille.

The infrared, night vision technology the U.S. Army used to spot Iraqi tanks in the dark during the Gulf War will be offered as a stand-alone option on Cadillac's 2000 DeVille. While only about 28% of driving occurs at night, night-time driving currently accounts for 55% of automotive fatalities, and 62% of pedestrian deaths. General Motors claims its new head-up display (HUD) night vision system will increase a driver's available reaction time at cruising speeds from 3.5 seconds to 15 seconds, which should help to make driving after dark safer and more pleasurable.

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The Cadillac night vision system is active only when the headlamps are on, and it's dark. A switch allows the driver to turn the system on and off under these conditions, and adjust the vertical position of the HUD image and its intensity. With the system on, the driver can see objects up to a quarter-mile away -- or three to five times as far as is possible with traditional low beam lamps, and up to three times the distance of high beam lamps.

For the last decade, GM has been developing night vision for automotive use -- AI broke the story in 1991. Since that time, the technology has gone from complex, million-dollar-per-copy, military units, to a commercial design that is practical, compact and affordable. The new Cadillac system was developed by Delphi's Delco Electronics group, in conjunction with Raytheon Systems Co., a supplier of aerospace and naval radars and electronic systems.

DeVille's night vision system is self-contained, with a camera or sensor mounted behind the grille (ahead of the car's radiator) and the HUD which projects a monochromatic, real-time, virtual image onto the windshield. The warmer an object is, the whiter it appears on the HUD image. The idea is that objects the driver cares most about seeing -- people, animals and other vehicles -- stand out from the black background of the night.

The camera/sensor, which must operate at near room temperatures, is temperature-controlled by a Peltier cooler. The Raytheon-developed sensor consists of two, fixed-focus lenses with 12 degree optics (11 degrees of which are actually displayed), and a depth of field from 25 yards to infinity. Refractive optics constructed of a proprietary Raytheon material assure that the critical range of IR rays needed to capture the entire "scene" are displayed on the HUD. According to GM, the unit is designed to withstand a nine mph head-on impact collision.

The system's detector uses a barium-strontium-titanate (BST) ferroelectric material. It provides analog, single-line video in two interlaced fields each containing 240 lines -- a line contains thermal information for 320 consecutive pixels. Each pixel then, is a capacitor, which changes capacitance depending on the amount of infrared energy it is reading.

Capturing IR energy much the same way a video camera captures light, a "chopper disc" rotates at 1,800 rpm in front of the detector. The slotted disc, creates a series of "still" IR photos which are interpreted by a processing unit into the real-time video signal seen on the HUD.

GM stresses that its night vision technology is a driving supplement, to be glanced at much the way a driver would use a rear-view mirror. But if it performs as well as the company claims, it could easily become just as commonplace.

Automotive Industry

Night vision comes to Cadillac - 2000 DeVille visibility system

Automotive Industries, Sept, 1998 by Nina Padgett

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