Safer and innovative traffic lights with minilenses and optical fibers

• The repair of a traffic light involves risk, high costs, and traffic disruption.
• We have designed a new illumination system with LEDs, minilenses, and optical fibers.
• This traffic lights will improve worker safety; the repairs are made on the ground.
• With this new traffic light, it is not necessary interrupt traffic.

When an array of LEDs has to be repaired in or removed from a traffic light, it is necessary interrupt traffic. A lift has to elevate workers to the traffic-light disks, entailing job-safety dangers, high costs, and traffic disruption. To allay some of these problems, we have designed a new illumination system with LEDs, using minilenses set into the base of the traffic light, from which a bundle of optical fibers emerge to feed the disks, and these optical fibers transport the light from the array of LEDs to the disks. The new traffic lights will improve traffic and worker safety because the repairs are made on the ground.