Decision Algorithm for Smart Airbag Deployment Safety Issues

Authors: Aini Hussain, M A Hannan, Azah Mohamed, Hilmi Sanusi, Burhanuddin Yeop Majlis

Abstract:

Airbag deployment has been known to be responsible for huge death, incidental injuries and broken bones due to low crash severity and wrong deployment decisions. Therefore, the authorities and industries have been looking for more innovative and intelligent products to be realized for future enhancements in the vehicle safety systems (VSSs). Although the VSSs technologies have advanced considerably, they still face challenges such as how to avoid unnecessary and untimely airbag deployments that can be hazardous and fatal. Currently, most of the existing airbag systems deploy without regard to occupant size and position. As such, this paper will focus on the occupant and crash sensing performances due to frontal collisions for the new breed of so called smart airbag systems. It intends to provide a thorough discussion relating to the occupancy detection, occupant size classification, occupant off-position detection to determine safe distance zone for airbag deployment, crash-severity analysis and airbag decision algorithms via a computer modeling. The proposed system model consists of three main modules namely, occupant sensing, crash severity analysis and decision fusion. The occupant sensing system module utilizes the weight sensor to determine occupancy, classify the occupant size, and determine occupant off-position condition to compute safe distance for airbag deployment. The crash severity analysis module is used to generate relevant information pertinent to airbag deployment decision. Outputs from these two modules are fused to the decision module for correct and efficient airbag deployment action. Computer modeling work is carried out using Simulink, Stateflow, SimMechanics and Virtual Reality toolboxes.

Keywords: Crash severity analysis, occupant size classification, smart airbag, vehicle safety system.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1079778

References:

[1] M. Devy, A. Giralt, and A. Marin-Hernandez, "Detection and Classification of Passenger Seat Occupancy using Stereovision", Proc. of the IEEE Intelligent Vehicle Symposium, Dearborn (MI), USA, Oct. 3-5, 2000, pp. 714-719.
[2] H. Kong, Q. Sun, ,W. Bauson, S. Kiselewich, P. Ainslie, and R. Hammoud, "Disparity Based Image Segmentation for Occupant Classification", Proc. of the IEEE Computer Society Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW04), 2004, pp.126-133
[3] J. Krumm, and G. Kirk, "Video Occupant Detection for airbag Deployment", Proc. of the Fourth IEEE Workshop on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV '98), 19-21 Oct. 1998, pp. 30 - 35.
[4] S. Enouen, D. A. Guenther, & T. F. MacLaughlin, "Comparison of Models Simulating Occupant Response with Airbags", SAE Trans. Section 3, 840451, pp. 343-358, 1984.
[5] R. Brantman, and D. Breed, "Use of the Computer Simulation in Evaluating Airbag System Performance", SAE Trans. Section 4, 851188, pp. 1072-1081, 1985.
[6] K. Watanabe, and Y. Umezawa, "Optimal Triggering of an Airbag" Proc. of the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles '93 Symposium, 14-16 July, 1993, pp. 78-83.
[7] S. Gautama, S. Lacorix, and, M. Devy , "Evaluation of Stereo Matching Algorithms for Occupant Detection", Proc. of the International Workshop on Recognition, Analysis, and Tracking of Faces and Gestures in Real-Time Systems, 26-27 Sept. 1999, pp. 177-184.
[8] M. E. Farmer, and A.K. Jain, "Integrated Segmentation and Classification for Automotive Airbag Suppression". Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Image Processing, 14-17 Sept. 2003, 3, pp. 1053-1056.
[9] D. Chaikin, "Airbags" Popular Mechanics", pp. 81, 1991.
[10] S. B. David, S. Lori, J. Carlson, and M. Koyzreff, "Development of an Occupant Position Sensor System to Improve Frontal Crash Protection", Proc. of the 18 th International Technical Conf. on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV), Paper No. 325, Paris, 2001.
[11] C-Y. Chan, "On the Detection of Vehicular CrashesÔÇöSystem Characteristics and Architecture", IEEE Transaction on Vehicular Technology, Vol. 51, No. 1, pp. 80-193, 2002,
[12] C-Y. Chan, "A Treatise on Crash Sensing for Automotive Air Bag Systems", IEEE/ASME Transaction on Mechatronics, Vol. 7, No. 5, pp. 220-234, 2002.
[13] G. W. McIver, "Method and apparatus for sensing a vehicle crash condition using velocity enhanced acceleration crash metrics," U.S. Patent 5 587 906 (1996).
[14] R. Shaw, and J. Onder, "Emergency Rescue Guidelines for Air Bag Equipped Vehicles", National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA),http://www.emergencygrapevine.com/vl0102/ergair.htm, (2002).