How to ensure driving safety in rainy days? Advantages of vehicle-mounted infrared thermal imagers in rainy day driving applications

Traffic accidents are more likely to occur on rainy days. According to statistics from the traffic police department, the accident rate on rainy days is 13 times that on sunny days. Arrow Optoelectronics' IR-Pilot vehicle-mounted infrared thermal imager has excellent imaging effects and intelligent algorithms. When the visual distance of the human eye or visible light is limited, it can provide long-distance clear image data, enabling safe driving on rainy days.

Pain points of driving in rainy days

When driving in heavy rain or rainstorm, it is difficult to clean the rain on the windshield in a timely and effective manner relying solely on wipers. The rain remaining on the windshield will scatter the light in all directions, greatly reducing the contrast of objects in the field of vision, especially on rainy nights, when the line of sight will be severely obstructed; the messy traces of rain will affect the sensitivity of the human retina and cause blurred vision; fog is very easy to form on the windshield and windows, seriously affecting the driver's line of sight.

On rainy days, especially rainy nights, the human eye's observation range is extremely limited. Coupled with factors such as slippery ground reflections, the risk factor of travel is relatively high. Driving on rainy days places higher requirements and challenges on the driver's skills and vehicle status. In this case, a variety of perception hardware and software systems that improve driving safety have emerged.

However, visible light cameras have no penetrating function in low-light conditions or in severe weather conditions such as rain, snow and fog, and their effectiveness is greatly reduced; millimeter-wave radars lack the ability to recognize obstacles; ultrasonic radars have limited distances and are difficult to make advance judgments when driving at high speeds; and lidars are easily affected by weather, so none of them are perfect.

From a technical perspective, the advantages of infrared thermal imaging over other sensors such as visible light cameras, lidar, and millimeter-wave radar are that it has night vision capabilities and is less affected by rain, snow, fog, and dust. At the same time, infrared thermal imaging is very sensitive to living things and can be used as an excellent choice and supplement for assisted driving at night and in bad weather, or to increase the safety and reliability of autonomous driving.