Advanced vehicle navigation based on the US Global Positioning Systems (GPS) will play
a major role in future vehicle control systems. Contemporary vehicle navigation systems
generally consist of vehicle positioning using satellites and location and orientation of the
vehicle with respect to the roadway geometry using a digitised map on a CD-ROM. The
standard GPS (with Selective Availability) enables positioning with an accuracy of at least
100 m and is sufficiently accurate for most route guidance tasks. More accurate, precision
navigation can be obtained by Differential GPS techniques. A new light concept called
Adaptive Light Control (ALC) has been developed with the aim to improve night-time traffic
safety. ALC improves the headlamp illumination by means of continuous adaptation of the
headlamps according to the current driving situation and current environment. In order
to ensure rapid prototyping and early testing, the step from offline to online (real-time)
simulation of light distributions has been successfully completed in the driving simulator.
The solutions are directly ported to real vehicles to allow further testing with natural road
conditions.
