Night Vision Challenges for Cars and Boats

At night, it is a dangerous period with high incidence of road and sea accidents. According to statistics, the rate of driving accidents at night is much higher than that during the day; when ships sail in low visibility conditions such as night, dense fog, and heavy rain, the risks of collision, grounding, and falling into the water increase sharply. The illumination range of car headlights is limited, and it is difficult for ship radars to identify small floating objects-when the human eye and conventional sensors are "blind" at the same time in the dark, who will protect travel safety? Jiangxi Niankang Industry and Trade Co., Ltd. uses low-light full-color night vision technology as an entry point to try to make up for this pair of "dark night eyes" for the automobile and shipbuilding industries.

Let's look at the automobile industry first. Driving at night has long faced triple visual dilemmas. First, the blind area is illuminated. The effective irradiation distance of standard car high beam lights is about 100 to 150 meters, and people, vehicles, and obstacles beyond this range are almost completely invisible; the low beam covers a shorter range, and the response time left for drivers on highways is often less than 3 seconds. Pedestrians, throwing objects, and malfunctioning vehicles that suddenly appear at night can easily lead to serious accidents. Second, tunnel vision. The drastic changes in light and dark in the moment when entering and exiting the tunnel will cause the driver to temporarily "blind"; there is insufficient light in the tunnel, and the details of the road surface, the outline of the vehicle in front, and the types of obstacles are difficult to identify. Third, severe weather penetration is insufficient. Under conditions of fog, heavy rain, and dust, both visible light and ordinary infrared cameras are greatly attenuated, and the black and white images of traditional night vision systems are more difficult to identify key information such as pedestrians and vehicle types.

The deeper problem is that the amount of information output by traditional vehicle-mounted night vision systems is extremely limited. The driver cannot tell whether it is a pedestrian or an animal, whether it is a stationary obstacle or a moving vehicle, whether it is an ordinary roadblock or a dangerous goods carrier. This dilemma of "seeing but not clearly" seriously restricts the actual safety value of night vision technology. If night vision only provides contours, but not colors, details and target types, it will be difficult to truly translate into driving decisions.

The night vision challenges faced by the shipping industry are even more severe. During night navigation, obstacles such as channel buoys, small fishing boats, and floating containers are almost invisible in the darkness, and it is difficult to identify the type and outline of the targets solely relying on radar. The coastal and inland waterway environments are complex, with dense obstacles such as bridge piers, shoals, and aquaculture rafts. The risk of collision increases significantly when the visibility is extremely low at night. What's more challenging is that in adverse sea conditions such as thick fog and heavy rain, the penetrating power of visible light cameras drops sharply, while infrared thermal imaging can detect heat sources but loses color information - it cannot distinguish the colors of navigation marks or identify ship names and logos, greatly reducing navigation safety. In international waterways, the colors of navigation marks such as red, green, and white have clear regulatory significance. Once they cannot be identified, it may lead to misjudgment.

In addition, the ship's bridge often requires multiple crew members to coordinate observation, and traditional single-screen night vision equipment cannot achieve multiple terminals to share perspectives; in search and rescue scenarios, there is a lack of wearable portable night vision equipment, which seriously restricts the efficiency of night Incident Response Service. Deck inspection, berthing observation, and search for people falling into the water can only rely on the naked eye and flashlight, which is inefficient and risky.

It is these real and sharp pain points that give low-light full-color night vision technology a clear place to be used. With its independently developed low-light full-color imaging engine as its core, Niankang Industry and Trade deeply integrates cutting-edge optical technology with AI intelligent computing to provide breakthrough night vision solutions for the two major industries of automobile and shipbuilding. Output high-definition full-color pictures in real time in a star-level extremely dark environment, so that there are no blind spots for driving at night and dangerous shoals for sailing at night. In the next article, we will conduct an in-depth analysis of low-light full-color engine, infrared multi-spectral fusion, AI intelligent computing and anti-overexposure technology to see how Niankang rewrites night vision rules.