Vehicle interior identification and monitoring system

In a motor vehicle having an interior passenger compartment having a front seat, said compartment having contents comprising objects and at least one occupant, said contents being of certain classes, an interior monitoring system comprising:

• (a) recognition and identification means for recognizing and identifying at least one of said contents, said recognition and identification means comprising:
• means for irradiating said at least one of said contents of said compartment, receiver means for receiving reflected radiation from said at least one of said contents in the compartment and generating a signal corresponding to the received radiation, and
• pattern recognition means for recognizing and thus identifying the class of said at least one of said contents by processing said signal corresponding to the received radiation into an identification of the class of said at least one of said contents based on data corresponding to patterns of received radiation stored within said pattern recognition means and associated with possible classes of contents of the vehicle;
• b) location determining means coupled to said recognition and identification means for determining the location of said at least one of said contents within said passenger compartment;
• and
• c) output means coupled to said location determining means for affecting at least one other system within the vehicle based on (i) the determined location of said at least one of said contents within said vehicle and (ii) the identification of the class of said at least one of said contents within said vehicle.

In a motor vehicle having an interior passenger compartment, an interior monitoring system comprising:

• a) means for irradiating at least one portion of said vehicle interior passenger compartment;
• b) receiver means for receiving reflected radiation from said at least one irradiated portion of said vehicle interior passenger compartment;
• c) processor means coupled to said receiver means for processing said received radiation in order to create an electronic signal characteristic of said at least one irradiated portion of said vehicle interior passenger compartment based on said received radiation;
• d) categorization means coupled to said processor means for categorizing said signal, said categorization means comprising pattern recognition means for recognizing the presence or absence of an occupying item in said vehicle interior passenger compartment by processing said signal into a categorization of said signal based on data corresponding to patterns of received radiation stored within said pattern recognition means and associated with possible occupying items of the vehicle and the absence of such occupying items;
• and
• e) output means coupled to said categorization means for affecting at least one other system within said vehicle based on the categorization of said signal.