BMW launches next-gen Night Vision system
August 18, 2008 by George Skentzos
BMW aims at improving pedestrian safety when it launches a world first Night Vision system which can automatically detect potential hazards with the arrival of the new 7 Series next year.
On Australian roads especially, the technology will play another vital role as an early detection system for would-be road kill.
Picture this scenario, driving along a lonely road – pitch black, somewhere in the Simpson Desert – roo central, at a hundred clicks in over half a million dollars worth of car.
This is the exact situation the CarAdvice team was placed in when it took two Aston Martins to the heart of Australia on another leg of our Full Throttle expedition.
At the time all we had between us and what was sure to be a viral image of a kangaroo-powered DBS was a sacrificial rental driven by Alborz leading the way – tense times.
This new Night Vision system uses a thermal imaging camera which provides a real-time moving video image which allows the driver to recognise people, animals and other objects, beyond the reach of headlights.
“According to official statistics, 43 per cent of fatal Australian accidents occur at night, even though most driving occurs during the day,” says Guenther Seemann, BMW Group Australia Managing Director.
Now this technology already made its debut back in 2006 on the previous 7 Series, however BMW have made significant software enhancements to the point where the system can now detect individual people for the first time.
Rather than constantly glimpsing at the night-time monitor, the system now uses intelligent algorithms to search specifically for pedestrians then highlights the individual in a yellow colour in the video image.
If the system determines a potential risk ahead, it will notify the driver with an additional warning.
To minimise the number of warnings, the system analyses each situation, restricting its warnings to pedestrians in a warning corridor determined as a function of speed, the steering angle, and the yaw rate of the car.
This warning comes in the form of a symbol in both the control display and the head-up display projected onto the windscreen.
Print it: 
That is so cool!
Didn’t Mercedes already have a similar system on the S-Class?
Yes, MB have this already in both their S and CL classes. And their’s is far better as it shows the night vision display in the instrument cluster, which doubles as a LCD speedo when not in use.
BMW developed it first back in 2005………it was the first production car to ever have it.
ey i thought the honda had that aswell
Ahh thanks for the clarification BM. I don’t think the Mercedes version has the Headsup display on the windscreen or the motion detection.
Cadillac offered night vision in 2000. Toyota and Honda had JDM cars fitted with IR systems in 2003 and 2004 respectively.