A new decision making algorithm for airbag control

Abstract

Airbag systems have been introduced to supplement the seat belt system primarily to reduce head injuries. Most of the present airbag systems use distributed mechanical sensors, which are costly, not easy to calibrate, and not effective to trigger the airbag on time for different types of crashes. An electronic sensor is more effective in the sense that the signal from the accelerometer can be digitized and analyzed to study the behavior of the signal for different types of crashes. Unfortunately, most of the algorithms which are used for electronic sensors still have some problems. They either fail to trigger the airbag on time for several types of high speed crashes such as pole and angle crashes, or if they do trigger at these crashes they also trigger at low speed barrier crashes. A new algorithm for an electronic sensor is presented. This algorithm has been developed by analyzing a large volume of data obtained from actual crash testing experiments. The algorithm works for all types of crashes. The algorithm has been tested by applying it on real crash testing data. A hardware circuit has also been proposed in the paper, which can be used to implement the algorithm for real-time operations. >