Patent ID: 6729646
Filing Date: 2004-05-04
Classification: B60R

Abstract:
A method of controlling a vehicle occupant safety restraint system including an airbag, said method comprising the steps of;generating an acceleration signal indicative of vehicle acceleration; determining a jerk signal from a slope of the acceleration signal; determining a velocity signal by integrating the acceleration signal; determining a predicted velocity indicative of a relative velocity between a passenger and the vehicle at a time equal to a present time plus an airbag inflation time in accordance with the velocity signal, the jerk signal, the acceleration signal and a deploy time period required to deploy the safety restraint system; subtracting the predicted velocity from a velocity threshold to obtain a difference value and applying a weighting factor to the difference value to limit the predicted velocity to values between zero and one; and generating a deployment signal to activate the occupant safety restraint system when the predicted velocity exceed the velocity threshold.