Recently, Bentley received a very urgent message from a VVIP client from the North Pole. This client really needed to track a missing reindeer that is very special to him, and the client needs him back by the 24th!
As a VVIP client, it was only 12 months ago that this client reached out to Bentley to source a more luxurious alternative to his already outdated sleigh. Bentley definitely delivered in the form of the Reindeer Eight which is a customized Flying Spur V8.
This year, an irreplaceable member of his team went missing, the one who is responsible for plotting and navigating a global grand tour in an unimaginable scale. It is said that this specific reindeer plots a trip of around 41 million miles in just a single night, and for this responsibility, he is aided by a shiny red nose.
It is a good thing then that Bentley seemed to have foreseen this type of catastrophe as they have equipped almost two-thirds of Bentayga orders with the state-of-the-art technology known as ADAS (also known as Advanced Deer Alert System). Night Vision is one of the key features of ADAS and it will definitely come in handy to better locate the red-nosed reindeer in time for Christmas.
Night Vision has three main components: a Forward Infra Red (FIR) imager, but for this instance FIR was dubbed as Festive Isolating Reindeer, an electronic control unit, and the driver instrument panel.
The FIR imager is a thermal imager that can capture infrared energy for up to 140m in front of the car using fixed focus optics. Mounted in the Bentayga’s front grille, it has a 24-degrees horizontal field of view beyond the car. The FIR imager is also equipped with its own wash outlet to clear road grime, ice, dust, ribbons, gift wrappers, and even reindeer droppings.
It is also equipped with an electronic control unit (ECU) as the control interface between the FIR imager and the vehicle. The ECU controls the operation of the FIR imager, and it also keeps the image processing functions of the digital image, the animal detection functions, and the pedestrian warning system.
Small animals that are roughly around 1 meter (around 3.3 feet) in size can be detected by the vehicle from 7 meters (roughly 23 feet) in front of the car. For larger animals, though, those 2 meters (roughly 6.6 feet) and above, it can easily be detected from as far as 140 meters (roughly 460 feet) away. The thermal resolution of the system is enough to detect the tread pattern in tires, and for this quest, the radiant heat of a certain red nose. The display system shows the processed images as a video.
The night vision system shows its view in the driver information panel as a black a white image, and they emphasize those that it detects using brackets and highlights depending on its proximity.
When the headlamps are on – no matter if it was switched manually or automatically – the Night Vision system becomes available. It helps the driver by adding another vision aside from the headlights, giving another layer of feedback for the driver, sometimes even beyond the visual range, but the driver is still in complete control of the vehicle. The night vision feature is another safety feature that helps in avoiding collisions especially when visibility is poor, or when there is an increase in animal activity. This is especially helpful when one is in the countryside.
When the Night Vision detects that the car is too close to an animal, like a missing reindeer, the brake master is pre-filled to prepare for the driver to come to a quick stop. The feature helps minimize the total stopping distance especially when a driver comes across an all-important reindeer.
Assisting the ADAS are 110 LED matrix headlamps, and it is also quite helpful during the search. It uses a specifically calibrated forward-facing camera to check its surrounding environment and oncoming traffic, so the all-LED lamps can individually adapt the main beam from each lamp. The 27 individual LEDs in each lamp are activated or deactivated so that it can be optimized. This allows the driver to use the main beam illumination at all times, without blinding the other drivers or other reindeers
The search is on to find this critical reindeer, it’s a race against time, with Bentley Bentayga clients all over the world asked to join in on the search – they’re the ones most equipped for it.
