An Embedded System for Posture Classification of the Vehicle Occupant

Posture analysis of the vehicle occupant is an essential issue for the smart airbag system. A vision-based system with stereo cameras provides diverse information such as volume of the occupant, distance from dash board to the occupant and so on. This paper describes the occupant posture classification method and its hardware implementation using two DSP chips. The system classifies occupant´s posture into two classes: in-position and out-of-position, and these outputs determine whether the airbag will be deployed. Performance was evaluated using our stereo image database. Results suggest that the system is satisfactory as an embedded occupant posture classification system