On April 8, Musk used giga Texas to tell the world how a good conference should be held, and if you haven't had time to watch it, you can click on our previous programs below to review it.
Giga Texas is significant to Cybertruck, which will debut in giga texas in 2023.
So, Cybertruck occupied the last part of Musk's speech at the conference: the finale, and took him off the stage after the old horse finished his speech.
It is worth noting that compared with the concept car version released three years ago, the Cybertruck on the official stage is closer to the mass production version, in order to meet the regulatory restrictions and the needs of daily use, it added rearview mirrors and wipers, which makes its shape look less "cyberpunk".
Seeing this, are you very much looking forward to having a "but" to turn around? This satisfies you.
However, this situation is highly likely to change in the near future. According to a recent patent document released by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Tesla has developed a "laser wiper" technology, and if this technology can be put into mass production, Cybertruck will look at the clumsy and stout wiper.
Is it possible to replace the wiper with a laser? This technical workshop will take you from the perspective of patent documents to explore the virtual reality of "laser wiper".
Limitations of traditional wipers
Glass is one of the indispensable raw materials in today's automobile manufacturing, and is widely used in automotive windshields, side windows, rearview mirrors and other positions. Due to the dust suspended in the air or foreign matter accidentally splashed, these glass products are very easy to accumulate stains in daily use.
Friends who often use cars must have a deep understanding of this, for example, two days ago, it rained in Beijing, and the rainwater entrained the dust in the air, and only mud was left after the body dried thoroughly. For this kind of "desert camouflage", car glass is not spared.
In the era of intelligent driving, these mottled mud spots will not only block the driver's line of sight, but also become a camera obstacle for vehicles like Tesla that adopt "full-vision autonomous driving solutions".
For the camera behind the front windshield, the traditional wiper can rescue them, but if it is a thicker and more viscous stain, such as bird droppings, the wiper will also be powerless.
For cameras arranged in the positions of the side fenders, B-pillars, rear ends, etc., because these positions are not equipped with corresponding cleaning devices, they can only be cleaned by the user manually. Our @Changyan CY teacher Chang has complained more than once on Weibo that his Model 3 reversing image is often pasted tightly after rain and snow, and he can only get out of the car to manually clean the rear camera.
So, we need a 24/7 solution.
New choice of lasers
Traditional wipers are limited by their structural form, it is difficult to reasonably install in areas other than the front and rear windshields, we have seen mini small wipers on the headlights of many cars before, but they were quickly eliminated by the industry.
From this point of view, Tesla's development of laser wipers is not all for the cool appearance. Because the laser wiper is not limited to the use of the front windshield, in the side fin panels, B-pillars and other parts that are not easy to arrange the wiper or spray cleaning device, the laser source arrangement is relatively more flexible and more hidden.
Tesla did design it that way.
In this patent document, Tesla uses a Model S as an example to illustrate the practical application scenarios of laser wipers.
As can be seen from the figure, Tesla has set up two laser sources 218A and 218B at the front cover of the vehicle to clean the stains on the front windshield 210A and 210B, and a laser source 218C is set on the B pillar to clean the stains on the front and rear side window glass 210C, 210D, and on the side fenders, Tesla also has a laser source 218D for cleaning the steering indicator 216.
So how exactly does Tesla use lasers to clean stains? Let's move on to patents.
The mystery of laser wipers
In this patent document, Tesla outlines the laser wiper as:
This is a device device that uses a pulsed laser to clean the stains attached to automotive glass products.
The laser wiper system is mainly composed of an electronic control module, a laser generator, a beam lens assembly, a stain detection module, an I/O interface, and a display.
The basic working principle of this system is first of all to detect the presence of stains in the corresponding area by the stain detection module. After determining the position, the electronic control module controls the laser generator to emit a pulsed laser, which is positioned through the light speed lens assembly and uses the energy of the pulsed laser to remove the stain.
Common sense tells us that lasers only have higher energies when they are concentrated, which is why a stain detection module is needed. With it, laser wipers can concentrate on handling stain areas and improving efficiency like precision guidance weapons.
Because the inspection process is so important, Tesla offers two ideas to choose from.
One is the use of vision, which is Tesla's housekeeping skill. The laser wiper can use a camera mounted inside it to observe a specific area of view (FOV) and pinpoint where these stains are located on the glass.
This detection method is simple in structure, but if the camera is also blocked by stains, the laser wiper is ineffective.
The second is to use a capacitive or resistive transparent detection layer covering the glass surface. Think of our phones, touching the screen will cause the capacitance or resistance of the corresponding position of the screen to change, and the phone can track the position of the finger. Similarly, stains can change the capacitance or resistance of the transparent sensing layer on the glass.
This method requires a separate layer of hardware on the glass, which can stably detect foreign objects, but the daily driving of the vehicle may cause wear and tear on this layer of inspection hardware, which is the defect of this scheme.
The two detection methods have their own advantages and disadvantages, and can be freely selected according to the different scenes where the laser wiper is located.
After determining the stain position, the next step, as shown in the following figure, the electronic control module will control the laser generator 108 to generate a laser beam of the corresponding wavelength, frequency, pulse rate and other parameters, through the beam lens module 110, irradiated to the stain area 210. Among them, the lightspeed lens module contains a steering component that relies on this component to illuminate a specific area of the laser.
In general, Tesla's set of laser wipers is actually somewhat similar to the laser rust removal device commonly used in industry, except that the target has changed from rust on metal to stains on glass.
Outside of patents
Just mentioned "laser rust removal", some students may start to be nervous.
"The laser can even remove rust, will it burn my eyes?" Will it damage the glass?"
This kind of worry is not necessary.
First of all, the energy of the pulsed laser must be exerted at a set focal length, in other words, outside this set distance, because the laser is in a state of scattering, the energy it carries is not large, and it will not cause harm to the human body.
Secondly, this issue related to personal safety, Tesla of course also considered.
As mentioned above, the laser source of the laser wiper can set the parameters such as the wavelength, frequency and pulse rate of the laser it produces. Tesla claims that this laser beam has been specially calibrated, and its penetration thickness will be much smaller than the thickness of glass.
At the same time, Tesla will also set a layer of indium tin oxide coating on the glass, which will be able to isolate or reflect the laser beam to ensure that the laser beam will not penetrate the glass and shine into the car, thereby ensuring the safety of the drivers and passengers in the car.
In fact, I have other concerns about the utility of tesla's patent.
The energy of the laser is stronger than that of ordinary visible light, but it is still a kind of light, that is, the refraction and reflection of light, and the laser is no exception. Laser wipers may have a good stain removal effect when the air is dry, but this may change when the humidity in the air becomes larger.
To put it at a relative extreme, when a laser wiper encounters a rainstorm, the laser may encounter or pass through many small water droplets before reaching the windshield. We can think of these small water droplets as small glass mirrors, refracted and reflected so that the laser cannot accurately hit the stain.
In addition, lidar may have a good effect on removing stains in a small area, but when the rainstorm hits, the entire front windshield will be attached to a layer of water, and I don't think the laser wiper can remove the rain on the front windshield in a short time.
Laser wipers may not be able to scrape away the rain in time in a rainy weather, which is a bit too embarrassing.
Therefore, our colleagues in the newsroom agree that as far as tesla's patent is concerned, the laser wiper cannot assume the full function of the wiper, and it needs another partner to help it cope with the rainstorm.
Interestingly, a few days ago, Huawei announced a patent for an ultrasonic wipers for vehicles.
Huawei's ultrasonic wipers work on the principle of converting ultrasonic energy into ultrasonic waves and transmitting them to the front windshield with ultrasonic transducers (motors), and the high-frequency vibration of ultrasonic waves can shake debris off the glass, thus realizing the function of "wiper".
Compared with laser wipers, ultrasonic wipers seem to be better able to cope with heavy rains, which require large-scale water removal.
Ultrasonic Wipers + Laser Wipers, we are about to kill the traditional wiper that has existed in the car for two hundred years, this kind of technological innovation tradition is really fantastic.
Cybertruck can also return to its original sexy appearance.
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