Video - BMW Motorcycle Adaptive Headlight


A centrally-mounted movable xenon projection light shines up onto a diagonally-mounted mirror, illuminating the road ahead. As the nose of the bike pitches up and down with acceleration or braking, the projector light rotates in its housing to keep the beam level. This can compensate for loads too, so if your pillion passenger is exceptionally fat or you carry bricks in the panniers, the headlight will illuminate the road, not the sky. Basically the rotating light always keeps the beam level.

Things get more interesting if you check the "Adaptive Headlight" box (no word on cost). That adds a stepper motor which turns the mirror on an axis to compensate for lean angle. That also works in conjunction with the pitch compensation to ensure the bike's dynamic movement on the road doesn't affect the throw of the headlight.

 

It's the compensating for lean angle that's made it so difficult to make a road legal HID installation. It seems to be a triple light assembly with 2 halogens as well as the HID, but whether the halogens are used as High beam or low beam I'm not certain. Logic would say that the HID is for low beam, partly because of the start up delay switching to hi, and partly because most triple beam assemblies work this way, but the images I've seen of the beam pattern seem to belie this.

Anyway, it's the first HID fitting that manages to produce a beam that meets all the requirements of the EU lighting regs. I'm a bit worried that it might be fragile though - a relatively slight knock might be enough to take it off its axis, and I suspect that replacing it will not be cheap.

Rob

 

That is cool, I watched the video, and its true, you get dark shadows and drop off light when going around corners.