US Patent 11161500 Advanced passenger safety for an autonomous vehicle

Systems and methods can improve passenger safety for an Autonomous Vehicle (AV) based on the integration of sensor data captured by the AV's interior and exterior sensors. The AV can determine passenger occupancy data corresponding to where each passenger is detected within the AV by the interior sensors. The AV can determine multiple sets of one or more driving actions that the AV can perform at a future time. The AV can generate crash impact data corresponding to where each passenger is detected from one or more simulated collisions between the AV and one or more objected detected by the exterior sensors when the AV performs one or more sets of driving actions from among the multiple sets. The AV can determine ranked sets of driving actions based on the passenger occupancy data and the crash impact data.