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Improve safety and comfort with custom automotive lenses

by | May 11, 2021 | Optics explained

automotive optics

Requirements for vehicle comfort and road safety continue to increase. As such the demand for driver assistance systems, based on machine vision and camera technology, also increases. Automotive optics are indispensable for features like lane departure assistance and adaptive cruise control. Combined with a number of displays a car driver can experience ultimate comfort and safety. Traffic information can be projected and displayed where needed and intelligent headlights can guide you on your path.

The automotive market is one of the most competitive markets. In order to maintain your market share, it is vital to keep on innovating and bring new products to market within a shorter time to market. In this article, we will discuss how to reduce time to market and costs for custom automotive lenses. But first, we will take a closer look at some of the applications of automotive lenses.

Automotive lens applications

Automotive lens applications include:

  • Rearview optics
  • Forward-facing lenses
  • Heads-Up Displays (HUDs)
  • Surround-view optics
  • Backup camera systems & location sensing devices
  • Vehicle surveillance systems
  • Lane departure vision systems
  • LIDAR

By enabling HUDs, intelligent lighting, backup camera systems, and lane departure systems the comfort and safety of driving have increased tremendously. It is expected that the automotive lens market will continue to grow in the coming years. Demand is high and time to market must be shortened.

How has the automotive optics market changed in the past years?

Cameras have been used for many years in this market, think about rearview cameras for instance. However, recently new applications have been added. As such, demand for image quality and image processing has increased. It is no surprise then that vision technologies in the automotive sector are a growth market with increasing quality requirements and customer demands.

Front view and rearview cameras are almost standard equipment for most cars. However, newer safety-related systems in which imaging systems are required have continuously been added. Think about lane change assistants, blind-spot monitoring, and emergency braking for pedestrian protection. All of these features rely on some form of optics.

Lighting the way with custom automotive lenses

One common challenge for automotive optics is the time it takes to prototype and then manufacture novel products. It might take months for an initial, physical prototype to be ready and tested. Luckily, there is a way we can drastically shorten lead times and thus improve time to market.

With our unique optics manufacturing and prototyping service, we are able to deliver working optical prototypes within a couple of working days (~6 working days). You might be wondering if this is also possible for more complex free-form optics. The answer is yes. No matter how complex the geometry we are able to deliver the physical prototypes in approximately 6 working days.

By capitalizing on shorter lead times you can rapidly prototype your optics and bring them to market faster. By using our custom optics manufacturing process you enable your company to bring novel products to market in a shorter amount of time.

Advantages of Addoptics for automotive lenses

  • Prototype high-quality automotive lenses
  • Reduce time to market
  • An iterative optics design approach
  • Full design freedom (including free-form optics)
  • Minimized investment in tooling & reduced risk
  • Shipment of product in days, instead of weeks

Are you looking for a quick and cost-effective way to prototype automotive lenses? We can help manufacture optics for various applications, including headlights, light guides and dashboard lighting. Feel free to reach out to us and discuss your project with us. We’d love to hear from you!

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