Light as a Service – Techniques, Applications, Challenges in Automotive industry

The automotive industry is moving rapidly towards Connected, Autonomous, Shared, Electric technologies. To provide a Connected experience in a car, Exterior Lights play a crucial role today and are expected to play a more significant role in the future. In addition to In-car Infotainment systems, Exterior Lights have opened a new avenue of use cases to communicate with the customer, nudge the user towards safe driving, create a personal connect with the customer. Today, a Digital Light System in a typical Mercedes car utilizes the state-of-the-art LED technology that runs in combination with MOEMS (Micro-Opto-Electro Mechanical Systems) based devices [1]. This system not only provides adequate lighting to create ideal driving situation, but is also capable of using Visual Light communication as a driver assistance. This has given rise to features assisting user towards safe driving experience, projection of images & videos to communicate critical road conditions. All these have opened up opportunities to offer Light-as-a-service, where the users are free to choose which light feature, they will pay for. In this paper, we discuss how Automotive Exterior Lights are used to communicate with the user, the technology & challenges while implementing this system. Additionally, this paper explores the possibilities of using Light-as-a-Service.