Abstract
A seat occupant monitoring apparatus which includes a sensor reactive to a force distribution applied to the seat by the occupant, means for making a plurality of measurements of the force distribution and means for monitoring the occupant based on the measurements. The measurements are used to classify the occupant and on a basis of the classification, parameters of the occupant's environment such as a seat orientation, the rate of deployment of an air bag or control of a seat belt pre-tensioner are altered. A neural network or other learning based technique is used for the classification.