Christopher Thomas Justus John

US Patent:

20040151344, Aug 5, 2004

Filed:

Nov 7, 2003

Appl. No.:

10/703957

Inventors:

Michael Farmer - West Bloomfield MI, US
Mark Dell'Eva - Grand Blanc MI, US
Christopher St. John - Northville MI, US
Galen Ressler - White Lake MI, US

International Classification:

G06K009/00
G01S001/00

US Classification:

382/103000, 701/301000

Abstract:

The disclosure describes systems and methods that pertain to interactions between a vehicle and an occupant within the vehicle. More specifically, various systems and methods for enhancing the decisions of automated vehicle applications (collectively “decision enhancement system”) are disclosed. In a safety restraint embodiment, a sensor is used to capture various sensor readings. Sensor readings are typically in the form of images. Occupant information, such as location attributes, motion attributes, and occupant category attributes can be obtained from the sensor readings. If the system concludes that the deployment of a safety restraint is potentially justified, an at-risk-zone detector can be used to determine whether or not the occupant will be too close to the deploying safety restraint at the time of deployment for the safety restraint to be safely deployed.