Lighting Live Annual Conference 2025 | Speakers Spotlight 'Allan Howard & Toby Penter'
Allan Howard is the Group Technical Director of Lighting & Energy Solutions at WSP. Toby Penter is a Senior Engineer of Lighting & Energy Solutions at WSP.
Allan is also the energy solutions business and convener of WSP’s global lighting community. Allan is a Fellow of the Institution of Lighting Professionals (ILP), a Fellow of the Society of Light & Lighting and a past President of the ILP (2011/12). Allan is an active lighting industry member, chairing and contributing to specialist panels producing national and international standards and guidance on lighting issues (obtrusive lighting, good lighting practice, application of standards, to name a few).
Allan is well placed to be aware of and understand current and forthcoming developments in the lighting and environmental sectors, enabling clients to be future-ready and proactive in the development of their lighting specifications, operations and service delivery to meet these developments and changes.
Allan is part of the team developing and updating the road lighting requirements and advice documents (RADs) that form the National Highways Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (DMRB) and Manual of Contract Documents for Highway Works (MCHW). Allan was awarded the ILP’s contrary medal in recognition of his contribution to the industry.
Toby is a lighting engineer with seven years of experience in the lighting industry, including three years with a manufacturer and four years consulting on lighting impact assessments, lighting strategies and environmentally sensitive lighting. Toby has a degree from the University of Greenwich and holds Incorporated Engineer (IEng) status. Toby is also actively involved in the Institution of Lighting Professionals and is currently the Immediate Past Chair of the Young Lighting Professionals (YLP).
He sits on the Early Career Engineers Plenary Ethics Committee (ECEPEC) and represents the YLP on the UK Lighting and Technology Board (UKLTB). Outside of work, Toby enjoys surfing, painting and video games, and he volunteers in Southampton with the Team Solent Sharks Wheelchair Rugby Club. He can often be found up a mountain – either hiking them in the summer or skiing down them in the winter.
Allan and Toby's paper is titled 'Help! My Autonomous Car Is Confused’ – LED Flicker-Machine Vision Impact'.
As the development of autonomous vehicles increases, various systems are being deployed by the vehicle manufacturers, including radar, LiDAR and camera systems to enable the vehicles to understand the environment they are operating in and to do this safely. The use of a camera system is cheaper than radar and LiDAR, so it has the potential to make such vehicles more affordable, although they may not be used in isolation.
This ‘cost saving’ comes at a price, and we are finding that LED flicker can negatively impact machine vision systems and other areas such as manufacturing and construction. The problem is essentially one of synchronisation; if the camera exposure setting is not synchronised with the LED, it can result in inconsistent image data, which may impact creation, characterisation and detection, possibly resulting in negative safety outcomes.
Whilst the IEEE has published a draft standard specifying the methods and metrics for measuring and testing vehicle image quality (June 2022), the standardised approaches to resolve LED flicker are still an outstanding issue.
Lighting Live Annual Conference takes place 18th - 19th June 2025
Thank you to our Event Partner: Street Lighting Supplies & Co. Ltd
Thank you to our Headline Sponsors: Charles Endirect | Orange Tek | Urbis Schréder | C.U. Phosco | Signify | Lucy Zodion
