US Patent 11538257 Detection, counting and identification of occupants in vehicles

A method of detecting occupants in a vehicle includes detecting an oncoming vehicle and acquiring a plurality of images of occupants in the vehicle in response to detection of the vehicle. The method includes performing automated facial detection on the plurality of images and adding a facial image for each face detected to a gallery of facial images for the occupants of the vehicle. The method includes performing automated facial recognition on the gallery of facial images to group the facial images into groups based on which occupant is in the respective facial images, and counting the final group of unique facial images to determine how many occupants are in the vehicle.