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AssigneeAerojet-General Corporation
InventorsAnthony P. Corrado, Stephen W. Decker, Paul K. Benbow
Estimating the term…
A system for sensing the presence, position and type of an occupant in a passenger seat of a vehicle, as well as for sensing the presence of a rear-facing child seat therein, for use in enabling or disabling a related airbag activator. The sensor system employs sensor-fusion, a process of combining information provided by two or more sensors, each of which "sees" the world in a unique sense. In a preferred embodiment, occupancy sensor samples two detectable properties, a first being a thermal signature and associated motion, and a second is acoustically measured distance and the associated motion. Infrared sensor inputs and an ultrasonic sensor input are combined in a microprocessor circuit by means of a sensor fusion algorithm to produce an output signal to the air bag controller. The output signal results from preselected confidence weighing for feature parameters generated by the two sensors and upon a fusion process which ultimately makes a decision which is extremely reliable. The sensor fusion matrix processes the sensor outputs in a decision making operation which includes weighing inputs to guarantee reliability. All sensor outputs, along with calibration data, initial conditions and historical reference data are considered in the process of making a decision of whether or not to deploy the passenger-side air bag in a collision.
A method for determining whether or not to de-activate a vehicle's passenger passive restraint system as a function of a current state value determined by comparing measured signal features to a predetermined set of confidence values and empirical relationships obtained using various known occupancy scenarios and a set of state change criteria, comprising the steps of:
Apparatus for determining whether or not to control a vehicle's passenger passive restraint system as a function of a current state value determined by comparing measured signal features to a predetermined set of confidence values and empirical relationships obtained using various known occupancy scenarios and a set of state change criteria, comprising:
An application specific integrated circuit device for processing sensory input signals received from sensors adapted to sense the characteristics of occupancy of a particular passenger seat within a vehicle, and for determining whether or not to de-activate a vehicle's passenger passive restraint system as a function of a current state value determined by comparing measured signal features to a predetermined set of confidence values and empirical relationships obtained using various known occupancy scenarios and a set of state change criteria, comprising in one or more chips:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.