US 5,528,698 · Granted 1996-06-18
The Camera That Stops Airbags From Hurting Kids
Imagine a tiny security camera mounted in your car's dashboard that watches the passenger seat to figure out what's sitting there. If it detects a rear-facing baby car seat, it tells the airbag to stay deflated during a crash—because an inflating airbag would actually hurt a small child. This patent protects that lifesaving technology.
The plain-English version
What it protects
The claim covers a machine vision system that uses a photodetector array sensor and lens assembly to capture and analyze an image of the passenger seat area. What's protected is the specific combination of hardware (the camera and processor) and the software logic that classifies whether a rear-facing child carrier is present. If another automaker used the same approach—capturing seat occupancy via camera image processing and disabling the airbag based on that classification—they would infringe on this patent.
Why it matters
Child safety in vehicles became a major regulatory and liability issue in the 1990s. Airbags save adult lives but can be dangerous to infants in rear-facing car seats. This patent represents one of the earliest solutions to that contradiction: a smart system that could automatically detect the presence of a child carrier and adjust safety systems accordingly. It's the foundation for what would become a standard feature in modern vehicles.
Real-world use
The next time you sit in a modern car with a passenger airbag disable button or notice that your airbag doesn't deploy when a car seat is in the front passenger position, you're benefiting from the occupant-sensing logic this patent pioneered.
Original USPTO abstract
A vehicle occupant safety system includes an image sensor and processor that provides a classification of the occupancy status of the passenger seat area to determine whether an airbag should be deployed. The image processing system includes a photodetector array sensor and lens assembly with image processing electronics to acquire a machine vision representation of the passenger seat area within a vehicle. The objects in the field of view are then discriminated to determine whether a rear-facing child carrier is located in the passenger seat, such that the passenger-side airbag can be disabled.
Patent details
- Publication number
- US 5,528,698
- Filing date
- 1995-03-27
- Grant date
- 1996-06-18
- Assignee
- Rockwell International Corporation
- Inventor(s)
- KAMEI; JOHN H., BOON; CATHY L., STEVENS; PHILLIP F.
- CPC class
- B60R21/01538
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