- Ford may be developing more advanced headlights that point where the driver is looking
- Opel, when it was owned by GM, was working on similar technology in 2015
- US headlight laws are now changing to allow for modern systems
Ford may be developing headlights that follow a driver’s gaze.
In a patent application published by United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on July 11, and originally filed by Ford in early 2023, the automaker details steerable headlights that would change direction depending on where the driver was looking.
Ford Adaptive Lighting Patent Image
Adaptive headlights from car manufacturers like Subaru can steer in response to steering, but Ford believes this capability could also be useful on straight stretches of road where the car isn’t negotiating a curve but the driver may need extra lighting alongside the vehicle’s path. This could help illuminate potential obstacles or be useful when the vehicle is in the center or left lane of a multi-lane road, Ford notes.
Object detection systems could also be used for this purpose, but they may not be able to identify certain things, such as small animals, Ford says in the filing. And while eye-tracking and head-motion tracking systems exist, individually they can be too sensitive, picking up odd movements, the automaker adds.
Ford Adaptive Lighting Patent Image
Ford’s solution is combine eye tracking and head movement tracking to ensure that the driver is actually looking in a particular direction, and not just continually scanning the road or moving their head while keeping their gaze in a particular direction. The sensors will look for specific cues, such as whether the driver is looking through the windshield toward the road, and whether the driver’s head is fully turned in the direction their eyes are looking, before moving the headlights.
This is not a new idea. In 2015, when it was still owned by General Motors, Opel announced that it was working on similar technology. Adaptive headlights that turn with the driver’s gaze would likely be easier to bring to market in Opel’s home region of Europe than in the U.S., where federal regulations were recently updated to allow the use of modern matrix headlights which have been available in Europe for years.