ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 2 -- United States Patent no. 12,643,498, issued on June 2, was assigned to Semiconductor Energy Laboratory Co. Ltd. (Atsugi, Japan).
"Occupant protection device" was invented by Shunpei Yamazaki (Setagaya, Japan), Takayuki Ikeda (Atsugi, Japan) and Yoshiyuki Kurokawa (Sagamihara, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An occupant protection device which can protect an occupant without delay is provided. An image taken by an imaging device is analyzed to judge whether there is an object approaching the subject car. In the case where a collision between the object and the subject car is judged to be inevitable, an airbag device is activated before the collision, whereby the...