Patent ID: 8600656

Claim:
A method for providing driver assistance to a driver of a vehicle, comprising: providing a vehicle with a visible-light source emitting visible light and having a function of illuminating an environment adjacent to the vehicle or emitting a signal, said visible-light source being a light emission diode; driving the visible-light source using a visible-light source controller to emit visible light in a predetermined mode using driving data, with visible light in the predetermined mode being visible to an unaided human eye to maintain said function of illuminating an environment adjacent to the vehicle or emitting a signal, said driving the visible-light source including pulsating the visible light to generate a pulsed visible light signal having an emitted visible-light pulse; providing said driving data to a data/signal processor; receiving a reflection/backscatter of the emitted pulsed visible light signal from an object, at a visible light optical detector, and generating detected light data having a detected visible-light pulse using said visible light optical detector, said reflection/backscatter being sampled at an acquisition rate to generate said detected light data; identifying, by said data/signal processor, at least one of a presence and a position of the object using said driving data and said detected light data as a function of the reflection/backscatter received and of the predetermined mode; detecting, by said data/signal processor, a visibility in said environment using said driving data and said detected light data, said visibility being a presence of at least one of fog, snow, dust, smoke, rain, ice, gas, liquid, airborne particle and smog in said environment; wherein said identifying and said detecting by said data/signal processor use a relation between said emitted visible-light pulse driven by said driving data and said detected visible-light pulse sampled in said detected light data; and triggering, using a driver assistance processor system, at least one of an interaction with a driver of the vehicle and an action of the vehicle as a function of at least one of the presence of the object, the position of the object and the visibility detected by said data/signal processor.