Patent ID: 7804413

Claim:
An object awareness determination system comprising: an external object sensor system on a host vehicle and sensing an object external to the host vehicle and generating input data relating to the object, the input data including an object position, an object velocity |({dot over (x)}, {dot over (y)})| and an object direction of movement (({dot over (x)}, {dot over (y)})/|({dot over (x)}, {dot over (y)})|) an eye gaze monitor determining a direction of gaze (φ rel ) of a user; an eye gaze recorder recording the direction of gaze (φ rel, −i ); a past trajectory estimator which, after entry of the object into a detecting range of the external object sensor system, estimates a past trajectory of the object within a time span [t −n , t −1 ] preceding a time of first entry (t 0 ) of the object into the detecting range; a host vehicle movement tracker determining a past host vehicle position ((x,y) host, past ) and a past host vehicle yaw angle (φ −i ); and a controller determining awareness of the user to the object before the object has entered the detecting range based on an assessed observation by using the past host vehicle position ((x,y) host, past ), the past host vehicle yaw angle (φ −i ), the recorded direction of gaze (φ rel, −i ), and the estimated past trajectory of the object.