Patent ID: 11914679
Assignee: APTIV TECHNOLOGIES AG
Field: Audio-visual technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC G

Claim 11:
12. A system comprising:
a thermal sensor configured to detect thermal radiation emitted from an object in a field-of-view (FOV) of the thermal sensor and from a background around the object and provide thermal data, based on the thermal radiation;
a non-thermal sensor configured to detect non-thermal radiation associated with the object and provide non-thermal data, based on the non-thermal radiation;
an active NIR range-finder that includes:
an emitter configured to emit NIR radiation; and
a detector configured to detect a portion of the NIR radiation reflected from the object over a time period and provide dynamic NIR range data based on the detected portion of the NIR radiation reflected from the object;

the non-thermal radiation associated with the object comprises a portion of the NIR radiation emitted from the active NIR range-finder and reflected from the object;
the non-thermal sensor comprises one or more active NIR cameras, the one or more NIR cameras configured to provide the non-thermal data based on the NIR radiation reflected from the object;
the non-thermal data comprises NIR image data; and
a processor configured to:
receive the thermal data and the non-thermal data; and
detect the object, based on at least one of the thermal data or the non-thermal data determine a size of the object based on one or more of:
a geometrical configuration of the emitter and detector of the active NIR range-finder;
a relative target distance between the system and the object, the relative target distance based on the dynamic NIR range data;
an amount of frame-to-frame overlap between sequential images extracted from the NIR image data; or
a refresh rate of the one or more active NIR cameras.