A smart airbag solution based on a high speed CMOS camera system

In this communication we present a low cost smart airbag solution based on a high speed active CMOS camera system. The system continuously monitors the seats and quickly determines the occupancy status, and a passenger's position and size before the airbag is deployed. The camera uses an image sensor fabricated in a 1 /spl mu/m standard CMOS technology and is capable to acquire more than 1000 frames per second. Disturbing temporal instationarities in the captured images caused by illumination variations resulting from lighting condition changes while capturing the scene, and intrinsic motions of the objects in the scene are suppressed effectively by differencing images captured alternately with and without active structured illumination.