RheoLight Technology

RheoLight Crystal Glass Pigments refract light differently than any currently available effect pigment on the market. The physical and chemical properties as well as the morphology of RheoLight’s Crystal Glass Pigments, provide unique properties such as the increased visibility under increasing angles of observation – the Angular Independent Point of View (AIPOV) Visibility.

INNOVATION POWERED BY CURIOSITY AND ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY

Point-of-View Visibility


RheoLight pigments, with their unique properties and Twin-Flop Effect, help increase the Angular Independent Point of View (AIPOV) Visibility of a colored surface by returning light and laser along the incoming angle. It does this regardless of the angle of the surface, which is hit by incoming light and laser.

Increased angular independence of increased visibility is captured by increased AIPOV Visibility. This feature understandably enhances the ‘full object visibility’ of objects coated and formulated with RheoLight pigments.

Angular Independent
Point of View visibility


Angular Independent Point of View visibility (AIPOV) makes objects more distinct from their background, making them more visible and detectable to the human eye, LiDAR systems, and computer vision technologies.

By increasing the visibility of surfaces under a high angle, even towards near parallel angles of incidence, a more complete picture of the object can be distinguished.

It will, therefore, lead to a better interpretation and determination of object class, position, movements, and intent.

AIPOV Visibility

By increasing AIPOV Visibility, RheoLight aims to improve safety in various applications, especially in the automotive industry, where enhanced visibility clearly contributes to better object detection, determination, and subsequent accident prevention.

Introducing RheoLight

A CES Innovation Award-winning & Patented portfolio of the world’s first Crystal Glass Effect Pigments set new standards in Traffic Safety & Design Freedom levels, facilitating the Safe deployment of EVs and Autonomous Driving solutions—the World’s first commercially viable and industrial applicable solution for enhancing the visibility of 3D objects.

Twin-Flop Effect


The RheoLight Twin-Flop Effect is a unique property, intrinsic to Crystal Glass Pigments, which RheoLight brings to colors. With the introduction of metallic and pearlescent colors in the first half of the last century the ‘Flop’ effect was introduced into the color landscape. ‘Flop’ means that light hitting an object’s surface is mostly reflected away in a specular (mirror-like) manner, in contrast to the relatively homogenous diffuse or scattered light effect characteristic for solid colors. Thereby reducing the amount of light returning to the source of the light. Consequently, Point-of-View Visibility, by returning light or laser signal, is reduced. This means that from a ‘Point-of-view’ (POV) perspective (for human and machine vision), most light and information is reflected away from where it came from. High Flop effects thereby reduces Point-of-View Visibility. Highly metallic colors reflect most incoming light away, effectively decreasing Point-of-View Visibility.

In each application, RheoLight’s Crystal Glass Pigments always a return signal component back along the direction of incoming light or laser. By adding RheoLight, the best of both worlds is combined in retaining the initial ‘Flop’, caused by orienting the effect pigments (flakes) in an aligned manner, and adding a return signal along the direction of the incoming light or laser source, culminating in the Twin-Flop Effect. This enhances the Point-of-View Visibility for every coating.

Tuneable Detection & Determination (TDD®) Technology


The RheoLight Product Portfolio establishes our ‘Tunable Detection & Determination Technology.’ Because we offer various particle size options and the concentration application of RheoLight can be varied, this technology can be tuned to the required effect and can adjust the resulting RheoLight Effect as desired. Increasing the concentration of RheoLight adds more visibility potential to the coating system.

Color developers and formulators can vary the concentration of RheoLight additions. Small additions of RheoLight (i.e., as low as 1%) already significantly boost the LiDAR detectability of (mainly) darker colors.

In low RheoLight concentrations, this can be a subtle effect, whereas in high RheoLight concentrations, the return signal gets stronger, effectively increasing POV visibility significantly.

Higher concentrations of RheoLight yield a more pronounced POV visibility increase of 3D objects for the human eye, as well as for sensors.

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