Lighting + Sensors for Mobility

Photonics has undergone a revolution in the automotive industry in recent years, transitioning from mere lighting functions to providing cutting-edge technology for imaging, sensing, smart displaying, media, and for communication networks. Consequently, photonics has taken on new dimensions far beyond lighting in cars as well as in automotive manufacturing and quality control. It is not surprising that the automotive industry is showing an increased interest in innovative, photonics-based technologies. Myriad growth opportunities spur the lighting market to expand by about 5 percent  p.a. . An even greater boost is expected for the automotive photonics market.

Fraunhofer IOF transfers research into applicable solutions, offering the complete photonics process chain from system design and simulation, via realization of custom-specific solutions to system integration. Thus, we provide our customers with the next generation of innovation in the entire field of photonic applications in cars, automotive technology, mobility and production.

Our customers can benefit from our many years of experience in the field of automotive photonics.  The demonstration of our solutions will provide ideas for future projects, which we can tailor to meet your individual needs.

We are ready to launch new innovations to realize your ideas.

All presented technologies on this page can also be found in our brochure: "Lighting + Sensors for Mobility: Expertise in optical system technology"

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When it comes to avoiding accidents, communicating with other road users while driving is critical. However, this has posed an ongoing challenge for science. Projecting information on the street beside the vehicle is one solution to the problem. This requires bright, cost-effective, and miniaturized projectors for a small number of image contents.

Fraunhofer IOF has developed a miniaturized micro-optical array-projection technology enabling projection onto tilted and curved screens with brightness up to 3000 lux. Continuous innovation has led to displays which are visible in full daylight. These systems serve as warning indicators for cyclists or as animated graphics to open and close the trunk by waving the foot under the rear bumper. Projecting logos via signature lighting is a sophisticated feature for brand identification. This technology can be integrated into existing lighting systems e.g., in backlights.

Automobile manufacturers have already integrated this feature into their vehicles, such as the Welcome Light Carpet in current BMW models.

Adaptive driving beam (ADB) systems provide a comfortable driving experience by enhancing both illumination distance and road safety. With individually addressable beam segments, these systems prevent glare for oncoming and preceding traffic while ensuring clear visibility. Recent advancements of Fraunhofer IOF in micro-optical beam shaping technology have made it possible to build a solid-state ADB system. By using an LED array and precisely controlling channel cross-talk, ADB systems achieve high performance and safety on the road.

Fraunhofer IOF’s innovative solid-state lighting system enables the realization of an adaptive high beam and an efficient low beam. Both lighting units can be seamlessly integrated into a vehicle’s design language with a high degree of freedom while occupying minimal space.

The maskless irregular micro-optics offer an effective solution for low beam shaping, eliminating the need for absorbing elements. This allows for up to 75 % system transmission with a remarkably slim profile.

Researchers at Fraunhofer IOF have advanced the development of their array projection system, which is already established in the automotive industry. The new maskless design of the projection optics is particularly suitable for traffic situations where high visibility is an advantage to increase the safety of all road users.

To increase the brightness of the projection and simplify production, the absorbent film mask was removed. As a result, the lens can be manufactured using the conventional injection molding process while maintaining the optical quality of the projection. Based on this maskless approach we developed an animated projected blinker that projects a sequence of 3 chevrons on the road surface.  

The entrance lenslet apertures are chevron shaped and arranged in a space-filling array We realize a projected brightness of 7 klx on the road surface. The projector module is 40 × 40 × 45 mm³ in size. Additionally, the micro-optics have been realised by injection molding, offering large-scale low-cost manufacturing.

The directed communication of vehicles with other road users via ground projection can increase safety considerably. But daylight visible systems require brightness levels that rule out LED sources for a fully dynamic projection.

Holographic energy redistribution is the key for ultra-bright projection to be visible at daylight condition, when utilizing laser sources and redistribute their energy via digital phase modulation (SLM).

To achieve a large projected area while maintaining high brightnesses, a multi-channel approach has been demonstrated. It enables to generate situation dependent, dynamic intensity distributions from a small sized projector.

Newly developed light field displays enable a revolutionary approach to rear light design. Large-format 3D effects can be created on an ultra-thin surface, providing vehicles with a unique nighttime appearance.

We developed a technology to realize a 3D rear lamp. The slim size of the display optics (ca. 3 mm) allows compact construction without the need of facetted mirrors to give a 3D impression. The lightfield display is based on multi-aperture micro-optics to display icons or symbols with a ‘floating-in-space’ quasi 3D effect. The displays generate a field of view of 20°…40°. Tiny microlenses of diameter 300 μm together with individually shaped and decentered array of slide mask structures generate eye-catching patterns and motifs.

Combination of lightfield displays with tailored diffusors offer even more creative freedoms to generate unique rear lighting concepts. Additional application of such lightfield displays could be for display of icons, branding or more.

Head Up Displays project vehicle’s status information via the windscreen into the driver’s eye box. Providing service data (i.e. speed and navigation) in an overlay while keeping the view on the track ahead, these complex optical systems contribute increased safety and elevated driver experience. However, it is challenging to combine wide field of view, comfortable eye-box size, and compact unit space in these complex optical systems, while making high demands on resolution and high-fidelity projection.

Micro- and nano-optical structures help to overcome such limits. Waveguide-based pupil expander principles request for highly efficient RGB coupling gratings. We master those by electron-beam lithography in large area using the concept of metastructures. These are well-suited for cost-efficient nano-imprint-replication.

Tailored-light diffuser elements, which are utilized as intermediate image screen for the picture-generating unit, exhibit deterministic scattering functionality. Combining achromatic scattering, focusing, and deflection in a single optical enable efficient redirection into the projection path and compact system architectures at the same time.

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) laser systems in vehicles supporting advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and are going to play a key role in autonomous and assisted driving. Micro-optical solutions enable compact, lightweight, and cost-efficient systems.

Fraunhofer IOF has a strong competence in the design and manufacturing of wafer-level optical meta-structures for high-efficiency laser beam shaping for ultra wide-angle scenery illumination. Wafer-level integrated micro-optical solutions can also help improve the sensitivity of time-of-flight (ToF) camera sensors, which are an integral part of the LiDAR-package. Those, however, often suffer from a low filling factor of the light sensitive areas due to extensive space for complex read-out electronics.

IOF-fabricated microlens arrays, which are adapted to the primary imaging optics, molded directly on top of the CMOS wafer substrates improved the sensitivity of SPAD sensors by nearly an order of magnitude.

The monitoring of the vehicle interior using camera systems is essential for observing the driver’s attention and readiness level to take over in critical situations as well as allowing new interactive user interfaces and support further safety features.

An ultra-compact wide-angle camera including Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensor for 3D-measurement is developed to realize high compactness (<10 mm lens height) and large diagonal 180° field-of-view (FoV) with low optical distortion. This is achieved by utilizing a hybrid multi-aperture imaging approach combined with prisms tiling the overall field of view. Injection molded glass and wafer-scale polymer-on-glass elements enable temperature stability required for high automotive standards. A suited time-of-flight sensor enables additional 3D-measurement capabilities.

Identifying the surrounding of cars equipped with camera systems is necessary for pedestrians and bicycles recognition in future vehicles. But in harsh environments like fog, rain, night or sun glare, classical systems may fail and require more reliable sensor information.

Multi-channel catadioptric thermal imaging is the key. Catadioptric systems based on mirrors and thin silicon correction plates manufactured in cost-effective and parallelized wafer-scale technology achieves a 12.5° single diagonal field-of-view (FoV) at low F/1.1 and high transmission. To achieve a large overall FoV, a multi-channel approach with silicon prisms for deflection has been demonstrated while utilizing several low-resolution uncooled micro-bolometer cameras (resolution: 160 × 120 pixels at 12 μm pixel pitch) behind the optics module.

The currently configured 2 × 4-channel thermal camera has an optical system’s track length smaller than 18 mm and a lateral size of 70 × 35 mm² featuring an overall 36° diagonal FoV (image format 1:2.5) with an angular resolution of 16 pixels/degree.

Optical 3D measurement technology is a versatile tool that is employed in many areas of industry and research. Especially highly dynamic processes like the inflation of an airbag require high-speed  technology to examine and evaluate these moving objects in full 3D.

Researchers at Fraunhofer IOF have developed projection, acquisition, and evaluation technologies with multi-kilohertz frame rates by using high-speed camera systems in conjunction with gobo-projection and parallelized data processing. This enables us to capture and evaluate up to 1,500 3D-frames per second with each frame composed of 1 million 3D-pixels, or even 50,000 3D-frames per second with each frame composed of 250,000 3D-pixels.

We have already transferred this innovative technology to our customers. One of these systems can capture the crash test of a complete car; another system was optimized to capture a crash test from inside the car – withstanding the strong negative acceleration during the crash.

Many industrial production plants demand 100 percent inspection of the manufactured goods for quality assurance. To guarantee this at high production rates, inline measurement solutions are vital for an efficient production.

We develop customer-specific, fully automatic, robot-based, non-contact, optical 3D measuring inline inspection systems. These systems can measure areas from only a few square millimeters up to several square meters with rates in the millisecond range. We use specially developed optical systems and parallelized 3D algorithms based on multi-processor systems. The full-surface measurement can detect and interpret local deformations and defects simultaneously. The 3D measurement accuracy is in the range of 10^-4 of the measurement field diagonal.

We have already integrated systems into the quality control of casted motor blocks, large industrial catalysts, aircraft engines and more. The resulting data is compatible with common CAD systems. Your ideas or projects can be realized based on our experience in 3D metrology of more than 25 years.

In the optical industry, surface coatings play a crucial role in creating tailored surfaces for various applications. At Fraunhofer IOF, we specialize in developing surface functionalization and multi-functional optical coating systems.

Our expertise extends to working with plastics, glass, and metal, and we have successfully transferred these technologies to production and highvolume manufacturing. With our in-depth knowledge and advanced technologies, we excel in designing and simulating optical layer systems, developing coating processes, and characterizing surfaces and coatings.

Our capabilities cover a wide range of surface coatings, including: ultra-broadband antireflective coatings, scratch-resistant coatings on plastics, additional functionalities like anti-fog and self-cleaning, durable metal-dielectric coatings or transparent conductive coatings.

In addition, we offer exhaustive testing procedures such as environmental tests, mechanical testing and evaluation of optical properties. We also specialize in coating failure analysis and lifetime studies. Furthermore, we are equipped to measure light scattering and appearance, providing accurate and reliable data for your specific requirements.