Invisible assistant: Talking about infrared light in car cabins from four major applications

The car of the future will be a mobile extension of our living space. From scene lighting to the way of interaction with the vehicle, the interior of the car will become more and more comfortable, warm and safe, and infrared light applications will play an important role in this.

In the future, doors will open almost automatically, thanks to an application that is already well known from smartphones and tablets. Using biometric technology, the vehicle's 3D facial recognition system will be able to recognize the driver as he approaches, even from a distance of several meters, and then, for example, open the trunk or a door for him.

Once the user is recognized, other personalized settings can be activated, including seat adjustment, preferred lighting color and automatic playback of frequently listened playlists.

Figure: The Oslon Black IRED from ams OSRAM (above) enables particularly compact biometric system designs and also offers impressive optical performance.

Driver assistance systems are gaining increasing attention, especially safety systems such as driver monitoring.

In driver monitoring applications, a light source illuminates the driver's face with infrared light, which is invisible to humans. A specific CMOS camera with a resolution of 1 or 2 megapixels typically captures 30 or 60 images per second ( depending on the model ). The captured images are analyzed by the system to evaluate, for example, the direction of the driver's gaze or how often the driver closes his eyes. Finally, the safety system can draw conclusions about the driver's increased distraction or fatigue based on this information and issue a warning signal accordingly.

Figure: The TARA2000-AUT from ams-OSRAM is the first AEC-Q102 qualified VCSEL flood illuminator for IR-based applications in automotive cabins .