Passenger-related item loss mitigation

A vehicle control unit for in-vehicle tracking of an item, comprising:

• a memory containing instructions;
• and
• a processor coupled to the memory, the processor configured to execute the instructions stored in the memory to cause the processor to:
• identify an item within a plurality of vehicle cabin passenger regions, wherein in a manner to identify the item, the processor is configured to execute the instructions stored in the memory to further cause the processor to:
• capture, by a camera device, an image of a vehicle cabin passenger region of the plurality of vehicle cabin passenger regions;
• identify a region-of-interest of the image, wherein the region-of-interest is based on a detection confidence metric relating to the vehicle cabin passenger region of the plurality of vehicle cabin passenger regions, and wherein the detection confidence metric is an indicative of the item in the vehicle cabin passenger region;
• upsample the region-of-interest to produce an upsampled region-of- interest to promote image recognition;
• and
• perform image recognition of the upsampled region-of-interest of the image to identify the item within the vehicle cabin passenger region;
• associate the identified item with an identified passenger;
• in response to detecting an exit of the identified passenger, detect a presence of the identified item within the plurality of vehicle cabin passenger regions;
• and
• generate an announcement message based on the presence of the identified item within the plurality of vehicle cabin passenger regions.

A method of mitigating passenger-related item loss, the method comprising:

• identifying, via image recognition, an item within vehicle cabin passenger regions as a passenger-related item, wherein identifying the item comprises:
• capturing, by a camera device, an image of the vehicle cabin passenger region;
• identifying a region-of-interest of the image, wherein the region-of-interest is based on a detection confidence metric relating to the vehicle cabin passenger region, and wherein the detection confidence metric is an indicative of the item in the vehicle cabin passenger region;
• upsampling the region-of-interest to produce an upsampled region-of-interest to promote image recognition;
• and
• performing image recognition of the upsampled region-of-interest of the image to identify the item within the vehicle cabin passenger region;
• associating the item with an identified passenger when the item is identified as the passenger-related item;
• detecting, in response to detecting an exit of the identified passenger, a presence of the passenger-related item within the vehicle cabin passenger regions;
• generating an announcement message based on the presence of the passenger-related item within the vehicle cabin passenger regions;
• and
• transmitting the announcement message for alerting the identified passenger.