A new, turnkey system from Gamma Scientific provides a powerful, direct means to measure headlamp illumination visibility to the standards recently developed by Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
The optical measurement system (OMS), which is part of Gamma Scientific’s UDT instruments product line, integrates as many as 15 photodetectors with data acquisition hardware and signal processing hardware/software, to gauge headlamp illumination levels at multiple locations on a test track.
When paired with vehicle position sensing electronics, the OMS delivers illuminance data from all the detectors as a function of vehicle location, and utilizes IIHS developed software to automatically compensate for vehicle pitch.
The unique ability of the OMS to closely reproduce the characteristics of the human visual system is a key factor in delivering high data accuracy. This includes color correction using Gamma Scientific’s proprietary photometric filters, which are integrated with the photodetectors. These reproduce the sensitivity of the human visual system and provide accurate photometric results for tungsten, HID and LED headlamp systems. This is mated with a cosine diffuser to reduce the illuminance contribution from off-axis incidence angles, further improving accuracy.
In addition, photodetector signals are conditioned so that any light source, which pulses at above 35Hz, such as LEDs, will appear to be continuous to the system, just as they do to the human eye.
July 12, 2016