Data processing: vehicles – navigation – and relative location – Vehicle control – guidance – operation – or indication – Vehicle subsystem or accessory control
Reexamination Certificate
2001-05-10
2002-09-03
Arthur, Gertrude (Department: 3661)
Data processing: vehicles, navigation, and relative location
Vehicle control, guidance, operation, or indication
Vehicle subsystem or accessory control
C180S268000, C180S271000, C280S735000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06445988
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to the field of determining the occupancy state of the vehicle which entails sensing, detecting, monitoring and/or identifying various objects, and parts thereof, which are located within the passenger compartment of the vehicle. The occupancy state is a broad or narrow description of the state or condition of one or more occupying items in the vehicle. Thus, a determination of the occupancy state may include a determination of the type or class of any occupying items, the size of any occupying items, the position of any occupying item including the orientation of occupying items, the identification of any occupying items and/or the status of any occupying items (whether the occupying items are conscious or unconscious). The determination of the occupancy state is used to control a vehicular component.
In particular, the present invention relates to an efficient and highly reliable system for evaluating the occupancy of a vehicle by detecting the presence and optionally orientation of objects in the seats of the passenger compartment, e.g., a rear facing child seat (RFCS) situated in the passenger compartment in a location where it may interact with a deploying occupant protection apparatus, such as an airbag, and/or for detecting an out-of-position occupant. The system permits the control and selective suppression of deployment of the occupant protection apparatus when the deployment may result in greater injury to the occupant than the crash forces themselves. This is accomplished in part through a specific placement of transducers of the system, the use of a pattern recognition system, possibly a trained neural network and combinations of neural networks called modular neural, voting or ensemble neural networks, and/or a novel analysis of the signals from the transducers.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Prior Art on Sensing of Out-of-position Occupants and Rear Facing Child Seats
Whereas thousands of lives have been saved by airbags, a large number of people have also been injured, some seriously, by the deploying airbag, and thus significant improvements to the airbag system are necessary. As discussed in detail in one or more of the patents and patent applications cross-referenced above, for a variety of reasons, vehicle occupants may be too close to the airbag before it deploys and can be seriously injured or killed as a result of any deployment thereof. Also, a child in a rear facing child seat which is placed on the right front passenger seat is in danger of being seriously injured if the passenger airbag deploys. For these reasons and, as first publicly disclosed in Breed, D. S. “How Airbags Work” presented at the International Conference on Seatbelts and Airbags in 1993, in Canada, occupant position sensing and rear facing child seat detection is required in order to minimize the damages caused by deploying airbags. It also may be required in order to minimize the damage caused by the deployment of other types of occupant protection and/or restraint devices which might be installed in the vehicle.
Initially, these systems will solve the out-of-position occupant and the rear facing child seat problems related to current airbag systems and prevent unneeded and unwanted airbag deployments when a front seat is unoccupied. However, airbags are now under development to protect rear seat occupants in vehicle crashes and all occupants in side impacts. A system is therefore needed to detect the presence of occupants, determine if they are out-of-position, defined below, and to identify the presence of a rear facing child seat in the rear seat. Future automobiles are expected to have eight or more airbags as protection is sought for rear seat occupants and from side impacts. In addition to eliminating the disturbance and possible harm of unnecessary airbag deployments, the cost of replacing these airbags will be excessive if they all deploy in an accident needlessly.
Inflators now exist which will adjust the amount of gas flowing to or from the airbag to account for the size and position of the occupant and for the severity of the accident. The vehicle identification and monitoring system (VIMS) discussed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,829,782, and 5,943,295 among others, will control such inflators based on the presence and position of vehicle occupants or of a rear facing child seat. The instant invention is concerned with the process of adapting the vehicle interior monitoring systems to a particular vehicle model and achieving a high system accuracy and reliability as discussed in greater detail below as well as the resulting pattern recognition system architecture.
The automatic adjustment of the deployment rate of the airbag based on occupant identification and position and on crash severity has been termed “smart airbags”. Central to the development of smart airbags is the occupant identification and position determination systems described in the above-referenced patents and patent applications and to the methods described herein for adapting those systems to a particular vehicle model. To complete the development of smart airbags, an anticipatory crash detecting system such as disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/247,760 filed May 23, 1994 is also desirable. Prior to the implementation of anticipatory crash sensing, the use of a neural network smart crash sensor which identifies the type of crash and thus its severity based on the early part of the crash acceleration signature should be developed and thereafter implemented. U.S. Pat. No. 5,684,701 (Breed) describes a crash sensor based on neural networks. This crash sensor, as with all other crash sensors, determines whether or not the crash is of sufficient severity to require deployment of the airbag and, if so, initiates the deployment. A neural network based on a smart airbag crash sensor could also be designed to identify the crash and categorize it with regard to severity thus permitting the airbag deployment to be matched not only to the characteristics and position of the occupant but also the severity and timing of the crash itself as described in more detail in U.S. Pat. No. 5,943,295 referenced above.
The need for an occupant out-of-position sensor has also been observed by others and several methods have been described in certain U.S. patents for determining the position of an occupant of a motor vehicle. However, no patents have been found that describe the methods of adapting such sensors to a particular vehicle model to obtain high system accuracy or to a resulting architecture combination of pattern recognition algorithms. Each of these systems will be discussed below and have significant limitations.
In White et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,071,160), for example, a single acoustic sensor and detector is described and, as illustrated, is disadvantageously mounted lower than the steering wheel. White et al. correctly perceive that such a sensor could be defeated, and the airbag falsely deployed, by an occupant adjusting the control knobs on the radio and thus they suggest the use of a plurality of such sensors. White et al. does not disclose where the such sensors would be mounted, other than on the instrument panel below the steering wheel, or how they would be combined to uniquely monitor particular locations in the passenger compartment and to identify the object(s) occupying those locations. The adaptation process to vehicles is not described nor is a combination of pattern recognition algorithms.
Mattes et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,118,134) describe a variety of methods for measuring the change in position of an occupant including ultrasonic, active or passive infrared radiation, microwave radar sensors, and an electric eye. The use of these sensors is to measure the change in position of an occupant during a crash and they use that information to assess the severity of the crash and thereby decide whether or not to deploy the airbag. They are thus using the occupant motion as a crash sensor. No mention is made of determining the out-of-position st
Breed David S.
DuVall Wilbur E.
Johnson Wendell C.
Kussul Michael E.
Morin Jeffrey L.
Arthur Gertrude
Automotive Technologies International Inc.
Roffe Brian
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