Non-Contact In-Vehicle Occupant Monitoring System Based on Point Clouds from FMCW Radar

Abstract

In order to reduce the probability of automobile safety incidents, the in-vehicle occupant monitoring is indispensable. However, occupant monitoring using frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar can be challenging due to the interference from passengers’ posture, movement, and the presence of multiple people. This paper proposes an improved method for generating point clouds using FMCW radar. The approach involves point cloud clustering, post-processing operations such as segmentation, merging, and filtering of the clustered point cloud to match the actual in-vehicle environment, and a state machine combination step. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve high recognition accuracy in scenarios with multiple passengers who are moving and sitting in a relaxed manner.