25/06/2026
Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD has officially patented a new, artificial intelligence-powered safety technology designed to detect people, animals, and other living organisms hiding underneath parked vehicles before they begin moving.
Filed under application CN122200729A and published by China’s National Intellectual Property Administration on June 12, 2026, the technology aims to completely prevent accidents involving children or small pets sheltering under cars.
The system utilizes underbody cameras to create a two-stage computer vision process.
When the vehicle is turned off, the system captures a baseline reference image of the car's underside, including fixed components like the battery pack, suspension, and chassis.
When the vehicle is started up again, real-time cameras scan the underbody and compare it to the original reference photo. Instead of wasting processing power on the entire underbelly, deep learning algorithms isolate only the specific regions showing visual changes.
The AI then focuses exclusively on those altered zones to analyze the characteristics of the object.
It is specifically trained to filter out harmless environmental variables like shadows, dust, leaves, and mud, drastically reducing the risk of false alarms.
By recognizing movement patterns, body shapes, and behavioral cues, the technology can accurately identify a trapped or resting living organism and instantly issue an alert to the driver before the wheels turn.
