APPARATUS FOR IDENTIFYING A WEATHER CONDITION IN THE AREA IN FRONT OF A VEHICLE

An apparatus for identifying a weather condition in surroundings of a vehicle, which includes an illuminating unit for illuminating the surroundings, a control unit for controlling the illuminating unit, an image capturing unit for capturing image information of the surroundings, an evaluation unit for evaluating the image information, image data provided by the image capturing unit being compared with predefined reference image data, each characterizing different weather conditions, and a weather condition signal being generated, depending on a match of the comparison, the control unit including a pulse modulation device, with the aid of which the illuminating unit is controlled in such a way that the illuminating unit emits pulsed light signals