Mercedes breaks away and develops its own intelligent lighting technology

Lighting technology is one of the areas that has advanced a great deal in recent years, thanks to new additions to headlights such as LED lights and, above all, all the innovations that have come with them. BMW and Audi have developed technologies that improve the effectiveness of lights, such as the laser light of BMW and other technologies that provide a consistent beam of light and offer visibility at greater distances without dazzling other cars.

But Mercedes has wanted to offer a different technology, one based on a different concept for car headlights. Instead of laser technology, it uses what the German brand calls “micro-mirrors”, which work together with the LED diodes and allow the orientation and intensity of the light beam to be changed.

The micro-mirrors move thanks to sensors and cameras installed at the front, which record traffic conditions. Each of these headlights contains around one million of these tiny mirrors, which receive instructions from the computer coordinating the front sensors and move to avoid dazzling other road users, without losing effectiveness.

Each headlight uses four light groups with 1,024 diodes each, making a total of 4,096 diodes per headlight and 8,192 in total. These act like traditional lights but can also project symbols onto the ground, for example at a pedestrian crossing, alerting pedestrians that a car is approaching and that they should take extra care. A small detail that increases the visibility of the approaching car and that can be very useful to prevent accidents.

This lighting technology was shown installed on the Mercedes F015 concept, although it is not yet ready to be fitted to a production vehicle, but everything indicates it will not be long before it is ready.