[LMB] Airbags OT:

[Nicholas Rosen]

Peter Newman <pnewman at gci.net> wrote:

> Why can't airbags have a weight sensor? The more the
> person sitting in the seat weighs, than the faster and
> harder they deploy? This would make them safer for heavy
> and light people.

It's not just how fast and hard, it's where they deploy.
An airbag that will hit a tall man in the chest may hit a
child or a short woman in the face, with much more
serious consequences.  Also, airbags are set to deploy
rapidly, beacuase if they deployed slowly while a car
was colliding with lamppost, they wouldn't do much
good.  Once the accelerometer registers a large enough
acceleration to be interpreted as a crash, the airbag
deploys fast.  It has to.

> You could probably even have use radar
> or sonar so the airbag would know the exact size and
> location of the person in the seat. The data goes to
> the airbags software (of course airbags with software
> would cost more) 

Right.  Currently, I believe they have a simple MEMS trigger.

> and the bag then knows how to best deploy.
> There would probably be a time lag involved, since you don't
> want the bag to stop and think about where you are for
> even a hundredth of a second before deploying, so it should
> probably always be calculating this and then automatically
> deploy with its last calculated figure.

This all sounds non-trivial to me, but if you think it can be
done, you're free to try inventing it.  My colleagues and I
can use the job security.


Regards,
Nicholas D. Rosen (patent examiner)
http://ndrosen.livejournal.com