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Abstract

During night drives, when an opposite vehicle arrives, both the drivers are obliged to dim their corresponding light. The highest fatal traffic accident rate occurs on curved roads at night time. There comes the importance of the role of automobile forward lighting systems.

In order to provide enhanced night time safety measures, this work aims to design and build a prototype of steerable headlights that automatically dims the headlamps of vehicles, when an opposite vehicle arrives.

Why AHS?

Have you ever felt like going for a ride with your family late night? All you want is to have some quality time with your family, but it can be ruined by the opposite distraction. Suppose you are travelling on the road during night, and an opposite vehicle arrives, both the drivers are obliged to dim their corresponding light. But god forbid, this process might seem hideous for few people, and they chose not to do that. They probably thinks that the vehicle will pass after few seconds and nothing can happen.

Well, anything can happen in a few seconds. I myself have undergone that irritable situation, and I teamed up with some of my friends to overcome this situation. We put our knowledge and hard work to produce a circuit, that automatically dims the headlamps of vehicles, when an opposite vehicle arrives.

By implementing this modification in every vehicles, we can assure you that many number of possible accidents can be avoided, and provides more comfort to everyone, during night drives.

For further safety, we designed another modification that uses a microcontroller like arduino, for changing the headlamps holder via coding. This helps the headlamps to move with respect to steering, and hence is very useful for large bents like hairpins. For the demonstration of the project, a thick black box is kept around the circuit to replicate the night fall, and two led bulbs are used for dim and bright lights. A torch or equivalent intensity of brightness is used as the opposite light, and hence the circuit switches from bright to dim. For changing the position of headlamps, a servo motor is considered that changes the angle of movement, and can be coded according to steering. This by using inexpensive components, a circuit is implemented by us, so as to provide aid and help for society, and assuring the safety.

Brief Idea

An engineer is someone who creates innovative ideas and implements to make inventions, to benefit the society and hence the world. Every engineer should thrive to make the world a better place, so we, students of model engineering college, thrikkakara is presenting a simple modification in headlamps on vehicles, to improve its functionality to ensure more safety for passengers, especially during night drives. In this project, we are focusing on to remove the irritable situation during night drives, where the brightness of opposition headlights cause distress to drivers. We are implementing an automatic dimmer circuit to avoid this scenario. The circuit uses an LDR, and compares the resistance of this LDR with opposite brightness. If the intensity of opposition headlights brightness is greater than preset resistance level of LDR, the resistance of LDR decreases. This allows the increase of current flow and dims the light. Hence when an opposite vehicle arrives, the headlamps switches to dim. As soon as the intensity is reduced, the resistance of LDR increases, the current flow decreases. This causes the control circuit to switch back to bright mode and hence when there is no opposite vehicle, the headlamps are bright. Another modification we are focusing is the automatic turning of headlamps, to provide a wider range of brightness during dominant curves like hairpins. Light travels in rectilinear motion, but by turning the lamp holder, the headlight creates an angle of turning thereby illuminating larger portions of the curve. ATmega328P is a microcontroller which can be programed, to adjust the positions of holder according to rotation of steering wheel. A potentiometer is connected to the steering shaft, and while the vehicle is turned, there is a voltage variation in potentiometer according to the direction of steering. This analogue voltage change from potentiometer is converted to digital, and is given to the microcontroller. It can be programmed according to digital values and based on the digital equivalent of change in voltage at potentiometer, the holder is rotated using a servo motor in this prototype. Hence the safety of vehicles especially during night drives is severely increased, reducing the accidents and damage. Another main advantage of the circuit is the presence of inexpensive electronic components. Since we can't use actual headlights, we are going to use two LED bulbs to represent dim and bright bulb. A working model of holder is built and is connected to system with IC. Hence the project is implemented and results are observed.

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