Automotive occupant sensor system and method of operation by sensor fusion

A computer program product comprising:

• (a) a computer useable medium having computer readable program code means embodied thereon for determining occupancy states of an automotive passenger seat and producing an output signal for an airbag control system for certain preselected occupancy scenarios;
• and
• (b) said computer readable program code means in said medium comprising computer readable program code means for causing a computer to:
• (i) effect comparison of occupancy state values to a matrix of stored occupancy state confidence levels;
• (ii) determine if the occupancy state corresponds to a preselected occupancy state criteria;
• and
• (iii) output a signal upon correspondence being determined.

A program storage device readable by a machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform method steps for determining the occupancy states of an automotive passenger seat disposed in a vehicle space from signals from at least two types of sensors which signals are characteristic of said space;

• said method steps comprising:
• (a) processing said signals to generate a plurality of signal features;
• (b) combining selected ones of said signal features with other signal features or raw signals to obtain a plurality of fused features;
• (c) comparing at least some of said signal features or said fused features with a stored set of weighted confidence values and empirical relationships representing a matrix of occupancy scenarios and a set of state change criteria to determine a feature state value;
• and
• (d) generating a state signal if said feature state value is determined by said comparison to meet a subset of state value criteria.