Situation Appropriate Airbag Deployment: Child Seat Presence and Orientation Detection (CPOD)

Abstract

In the last years, the auto industry has grown increasingly aware of the potential dangers of passenger airbag deployments, especially for children placed in a child seat. As a solution to this problem, IEE has developped the CPOD system, based on its already hugely successful Passenger Presence Detection (PPD) sensor foil.

IEE’s CPOD system is divided into two components: the transmitting and receiving antenna loops, integrated in the passenger seat, and a resonator circuit fitted in the socket of the child seat. The need for extremely low radiation and a cost-effective system has led to a very basic antenna structure, which consists of single-loop coils printed on the existing PPD sensor mat. Weak electromagnetic fields (emitted by the transmitting antenna) are used to establish a communication between the resonators and the processing electronics as well as to supply energy to the low-power resonator circuitry. Using both the information encoded in the received signals and their intensity, the processing electronics are able to take a decision on the presence, orientation and type of a child seat. Thanks to the redundancy and the multiple modulation of the transmitted information, the necessary reliability and interference immunity for a system which controls airbag deployment behaviour is obtained.

Future developments will integrate an Occupant Classification into IEE’s sensor foil to offer even more parameters to modulate airbag deployment.