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Next up for cars: Headlights that hide rain

Motor vehicles may be in for an unexpected innovation thanks to Intel and Carnegie Mellon University in the form of headlights that remove raindrops from the driver’s view.

A report from CNET on the tech in development by Intel and Carnegie Mellon details just how the in-development tech will work. Headlights made up of a projector, which is itself comprised of lots of little lights, will use a camera situated behind the light itself to track the path of a falling raindrop.

That information is sent to a processing unit which predicts the path of the raindrop, presumably in relation to both the raindrop and the vehicle’s motion. The projected light is then turned off in the path of the raindrop, resulting in rainfall that doesn’t have the opportunity to reflect light to the driver and rendering rain more or less invisible.

According to the report technology of this nature will be ready in the next ten years or so. Just how it would perform in South Africa, which is sometimes inflicted with vertical rivers during the rainy season, and other similar locations remains to be seen.

Source: PopSci

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