Vehicle-window-transmittance-control apparatus and method

• Main Authors: Myers, Scott Vincent, Charette, Francois, Walsh, Alexandro, Scaria, Lisa
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 10.11.2020
• Subjects: CALCULATING; COMPUTER SYSTEMS BASED ON SPECIFIC COMPUTATIONAL MODELS; COMPUTING; COUNTING; DEVICES OR ARRANGEMENTS, THE OPTICAL OPERATION OF WHICH ISMODIFIED BY CHANGING THE OPTICAL PROPERTIES OF THE MEDIUM OF THEDEVICES OR ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE CONTROL OF THE INTENSITY,COLOUR, PHASE, POLARISATION OR DIRECTION OF LIGHT, e.g.SWITCHING, GATING, MODULATING OR DEMODULATING; FREQUENCY-CHANGING; NON-LINEAR OPTICS; OPTICAL ANALOGUE/DIGITAL CONVERTERS; OPTICAL LOGIC ELEMENTS; OPTICS; PERFORMING OPERATIONS; PHYSICS; REMOVABLE EXTERNAL PROTECTIVE COVERINGS SPECIALLY ADAPTED FORVEHICLES; TECHNIQUES OR PROCEDURES FOR THE OPERATION THEREOF; TRANSPORTING; VEHICLES IN GENERAL; WINDOWS, WINDSCREENS, NON-FIXED ROOFS, DOORS, OR SIMILARDEVICES FOR VEHICLES

A vehicle is disclosed that includes systems for adjusting the transmittance of one or more windows of the vehicle. The vehicle may include a camera outputting images taken of an occupant within the vehicle. The vehicle may also include an artificial neural network running on computer hardware carried on-board the vehicle. The artificial neural network may be trained to classify the occupant of the vehicle using the images captured by the camera as input. The vehicle may further include a controller controlling transmittance of the one or more windows based on classifications made by the artificial neural network. For example, if the artificial neural network classifies the occupant as squinting or shading his or her eyes with a hand, the controller may reduce the transmittance of a windshield, side window, or some combination thereof.