Ford developing adaptive headlights that rotate to match the driver's line of sight?

Ford may be developing headlights that follow the driver's line of sight.

A patent application published July 11 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), originally filed by Ford in early 2023, details steerable headlights that change direction depending on where the driver looks.

Adaptive headlights from automakers like Subaru can change direction in response to steering maneuvers, and Ford believes this feature could be useful even on straight sections. This could be useful for illuminating potential obstacles or when the vehicle is in the center or left lane of a multi-lane road, Ford notes.

Object detection systems could also be used for this purpose, but may not identify certain objects, such as small animals, Ford said in the application. Also, both eye tracking and head-movement tracking systems exist, but individually they may be too sensitive and pick up extraneous movement, the automaker added.

Ford's solution is to combine eye tracking and head-movement tracking to ensure that the driver is actually looking in a given direction. Before moving the headlights, the sensors look for certain cues, such as whether the driver is looking at the roadway through the windshield and whether the driver's head is fully facing in the direction the driver is looking.

This is not a new idea; in 2015, when it was still part of General Motors, Opel announced that it was working on similar technology. Adaptive headlights that rotate to match the driver's line of sight would be easier to market in Opel's home market of Europe than in the United States, where federal regulations have only recently been updated to allow the use of modern matrix headlights, which have been used in Europe for years.