Patent ID: 7227626

Claim:
A method for determining a current position of a head of an occupant in a passenger compartment of a motor vehicle, the head moving toward an automatic dynamic disabling zone in front of an airbag module, which comprises the steps of: providing an image acquisition unit having an ideal line of sight being substantially perpendicular to an ideal direction of movement of the occupant; recording an image scenario in the passenger compartment of the motor vehicle containing the occupant at least cyclically with the image acquisition unit and image information relating to the occupant being detected; determining both a position of a geometric center of the head and an apparent size of the head in the ideal direction of movement in a respective current scenario image; defining current lines of sight of the image acquisition unit as a vector, from a defined position of the image acquisition unit to a respective current position of the geometric center of the head; calculating respective current angles values between the ideal line of sight and the current lines of sight of the image acquisition unit; storing the respective current angles values and the apparent size of the head in a storage unit; and using the apparent size of the head stored in the storage unit at which an absolute sum of a difference between the respective current angle values and 0° was minimal to be an actual size of the head.