Decision enhancement system for a vehicle safety restraint application

A safety restraint system for a vehicle, comprising:

• a sensor, a plurality of sequential sensor images, a spatial area, a computer, a plurality of occupant attributes, a current condition, a plurality of pre-defined conditions, a deployment condition, a non-deployment condition, a detection heuristic, an at-risk-zone flag value, a safety restraint deployment mechanism;
• wherein said sensor is configured to capture said plurality of sequential sensor images of said spatial area;
• wherein said computer provides for:
• tracking said plurality of occupant attributes from said plurality of sequential images;
• selectively identifying said current condition from said plurality of pre-defined occupant conditions, wherein said plurality of pre-defined conditions includes said deployment condition and said non-deployment condition;
• invoking said detection heuristic after selectively identifying said deployment condition as said occupant condition;
• using said detection heuristic to set said at-risk-zone flag value;
• communicating said at-risk-zone flag value to said safety restraint deployment mechanism;
• wherein said safety restraint deployment mechanism selectively precludes the deployment of said safety restraint when said occupant condition is said deployment condition, and when said at-risk-zone flag value is yes.

A method for installing a decision enhancement application into a vehicle that includes a deployment mechanism for a safety restraint device, the method comprising:

• defining an at-risk-zone corresponding to a location of the deployment mechanism within the vehicle;
• configuring a sensor to transmit sensor images to a computer;
• instructing the computer to filter out all areas within the image that are not part of a window-of-interest corresponding to the defined at-risk-zone after receiving a preliminary determination that a deployment of the safety restraint device is necessary;
• programming the computer to set an at-risk-zone flag corresponding to a detection of an occupant within the at-risk-zone, wherein the at-risk-zone flag is set using at least one window-of-interest image filtered by the computer;
• and
• placing the sensor and computer within the vehicle.