Headlight aiming apparatus
AssigneesProgressive Tool & Industries Co., Panter Master Controls, Inc.
InventorsRonald L. Panter, John J. Taylor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An apparatus and method for aiming a vehicle headlight to a standard image pattern includes a frame movable relative to the vehicle. A housing carried on a vertically adjustable housing includes a lens focusing a headlight beam onto a reflective screen which reflects the beam image to a camera. A control compares the digitized image output from the camera with a standard image pattern and generates a correlation factor based on the difference between the reflected image and a standard image. Based on the difference, the control generates output signals to an adjustment device engagable with the headlight mounting frame to adjust the position of the mounting frame to reduce the difference to zero.
Claims28
An apparatus for aiming a vehicle headlight to a standard aiming image, the apparatus comprising:
- means for storing standard headlight aiming image pattern as a standard image matrix;
- means for sensing light emitted from a headlight, the sensing means generating an output on a pixel-by-pixel basis proportional to the sensed light intensity of each pixel;
- means, responsive to the output from the sensing means, for converting the output to an intensity magnitude value for each pixel in a sensed image matrix;
- means for forming a plurality of offset sample matrices, each formed of a portion of the sensed image matrix and a plurality of corresponding standard image sub-matrices each formed of a portion of the standard image matrix;
- means for determining the offset sample matrix having the highest correlation to a corresponding standard image sub-matrix;
- means for determining the center of the offset sample matrix having the highest correlation;
- means, responsive to the means for determining the center of the offset sample matrix, for determining the difference between the center of said offset sample matrix and the center of the corresponding standard image sub-matrix, the difference determining means generating a difference output signal having a magnitude proportional to the difference;
- and
- means, responsive to the difference output, for activating an adjustment means engagable with headlight support to adjust the support to reduce the difference to zero.
A method of aiming a vehicle headlight to a standard image pattern, the method comprising the steps of:
- storing a standard image pattern as a standard image matrix;
- focussing a light beam from a vehicle headlight onto a reflective surface;
- sensing the intensity of the reflected light beam from the surface on a pixel-by-pixel basis in a sensed image matrix;
- assigning a magnitude value to each pixel in the sensed image matrix;
- forming a plurality of consecutively offset sample matrices, each formed of a portion of the sensed image matrix;
- forming a plurality of corresponding standard image sub-matrices, each formed of a portion of the standard image matrix;
- determining the offset sample matrix having the highest correlation to a corresponding standard image sub-matrix;
- determining the center of the offset sample matrix having the highest correlation;
- determining a difference between the center of the offset sample matrix having the highest correlation with the center of the corresponding standard image sub-matrix;
- and
- activating an adjustment means engagable with a headlight adjustment frame to adjust the headlight position in at least one axis.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.