INTERIOR SENSING FOR AUTOMOTIVE OCCUPANT SAFETY

This paper describes the automotive industry's development of interior occupant sensing systems for improved passenger safety. These systems include advanced restraint systems, trapped occupant sensing and driver monitoring. The authors describe the integrated automotive safety systems as a series of interdependent safety states within two zones. The avoidance zone includes the normal driving state, a warning state and a collision avoidable state. The mitigation zone includes the collision avoidable state and the post collision state. The authors describe driver-monitoring technologies that track a driver's pupils. They also describe sensing devices for trunks that would detect a living occupant, such as a child, or a car-jacking victim.