According to foreign media reports, the U.S. Patent Office (U.S. Patent Office) unveiled the details of Tesla's new patent. The patent is a magical windshield wipers that use a laser beam to remove debris from the driver's line of sight.
Image source: Tesla
In the past, Tesla has come up with many whimsical ideas for wipers, the most interesting of which is its patent to "pulse laser cleaning of debris accumulated on glass products in vehicles and photovoltaic modules".
Tesla described the patent in its published documents as a vehicle cleaning system that includes beam optics that emit a laser beam to illuminate the vehicle's glass area, a debris detection circuit that detects debris accumulating in the area, and a control circuit. Wherein, the control circuit can calibrate a set of parameters by a laser beam, which is emitted by the beam optics based on the detection of accumulated debris in the glass area. Further, the control circuit may also control the exposure level of the laser beam on the fragment accumulation, and the fragment accumulation is based on the parameter calibration of the laser beam, wherein the exposure level is based on the calibration rate pulsed laser beam to control, and the calibration rate limits the penetration of the laser beam to the glass thickness. Not only that, but the control circuit can also use a laser beam to remove debris that accumulates on the glassware area.
Image source: United States Patent and Trademark Office
Tesla's flowchart describing the patent process is relatively simple and shows the use of removing debris from solar panels. The use of this patented laser cleaning component is divided into five steps:
Detection of debris accumulated on the glassware area installed on the vehicle;
Calibrate a set of parameters related to the laser beam emitted from the beam optics based on the detection of accumulated debris on the glassware region;
Control the exposure level of the laser beam to the accumulated detection debris on the glass product based on the calibration of a set of parameters related to the laser beam;
irradiate the areas associated with the detected debris on the glass product with a laser beam;
Detected debris accumulated on the area is removed by laser beam.
The system doesn't seem to be fully automatic. In this system, the driver can control the laser through a touch screen, joystick or other medium to communicate with the different operating components of the cleaning equipment.
While the patent looks very odd, the idea of using a laser to clear the windshield is very much in line with Tesla's style. In the future, if the new laser patent is applied to Tesla vehicles, it can reduce the minimum maintenance cost of car owners.