Let the Apple Car rumors roll on. Apple has been granted a patent (number 10,647,286) for “occupant safety systems” that offers a unique take on airbags and other safety features in vehicles.
In the patent filing, Apple notes that vehicular airbags often use interior components such as dash panels, roof rails, and steering wheels both for packaging purposes and to provide reaction surfaces to interact with the airbags and provide the necessary reaction force. In the absence of adequate reaction surfaces or tethers, airbags would deflect too much to adequately protect an occupant during a collision.
During a collision, occupants are protected from loose objects placed on empty seats within a traditional one- two- or three-row vehicle, such as backpacks or electronic devices, by seat backrests acting as barriers, the backrests impeding motion of the loose objects between the rows of seats. In non-traditional vehicle designs, for example, where rows of occupants face each other within the passenger compartment, there are limited options for reaction surfaces, tethers, and loose-object handling. Apple says that “new approaches to occupant safety systems” are needed.
What sort of approaches? Among them:
° A car that allows all of the seats to face the middle of the vehicle — even the “driver’s seat” in a self-driving vehicle.
° An inflatable barrier that slides between the passenger and a window with an imminent collision is detected
° Extendable side arms on a seat that extend when an imminent collision is detected.
Here’s the summary of the invention: “Occupant safety systems suitable for use in both traditional and opposed seating systems include various combinations of passive safety components: sensors that provides an output signal indicative of an imminent collision, seats selectively moveable relative to seat support structures in response to the output signal, inflatable restraints deployable from lap portions of a tensioned restraint based on the output signal, airbags deployable from a roof of a vehicle based on the output signal, cabin dividers deployable from a side of a cabin of the vehicle or the roof of the vehicle based on the output signal, and curtain airbags deployable between an occupant and the side of the cabin of the vehicle based on the output signal.”
