Distributed sensor system for sensing body parts and persons within the hazard zones of a convertible top

Safety system for detecting a body part in an area of a vehicle comprising:

• a plurality of sensor nodes which respectively have a capacitive sensor and a processing unit,
• wherein the capacitive sensor has at least one electrode and is designed to capture a capacitance change on account of a body part approaching the electrode, and
• wherein the processing unit is designed to generate capacitance change data on the basis of a capacitance change captured by the capacitive sensor;
• wherein capacitive change data are binary data that contain information indicating whether or not there is a body part in an area assigned to a sensor node;
• an evaluation unit which is designed to detect that there is a body part in an area of the vehicle at least on the basis of received capacitance change data received from the plurality of sensor nodes;
• a data transmission device for transmitting the generated capacitance change data from a sensor node to the evaluation unit.