Driver and Occupant Monitoring Patents: Who Leads, Trends 2026
- Five companies account for 81.2% of the field. 121 of the 149 records in scope sit with the top five assignees — this is a concentrated space, not a fragmented one.
- Filings grew 257% from 2021 to 2024. Annual filings rose from 7 in 2021 to 25 in 2024, before the count for 2025 onward understates activity due to publication lag.
- B60R claims cover nearly half the field. 72 of 149 records (48.3%) touch vehicle-parts-and-accessories claims — the densest single class in the dataset.
Filing growth compares 2021 (7 records) with 2024 (25) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 149 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Driver and occupant monitoring systems combine cabin sensing — infrared illumination, gaze estimation, drowsiness detection — with the vehicle control logic that acts on it. This dataset spans 149 published records filed between 2015 and mid-2026, drawn from a search targeting drowsiness detection, gaze estimation, child presence detection, infrared illumination, cabin privacy and regulatory-compliance claims. It is a narrow, mature-adjacent field: a handful of automotive-mirror and electronics suppliers built the earliest core patents, and more recent entrants are filing around vision-based and software-defined variants of the same sensing problem.
The picture below is filing-driven rather than litigation-driven: it shows where claim space is occupied and where it is thin, not which patents have been tested in court. Because publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, the most recent one to two years in any trend chart will always look lighter than they will once the backlog clears.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 149 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filings climbed from 3 in 2017 to a peak of 39 in 2022, then continued at a high but uneven pace; annual counts from 2021 (7) to 2024 (25) mark the clearest complete-year growth run in the dataset, a 257% rise. 2025 and 2026 figures will rise as publication catches up.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
B60R (vehicles, parts & accessories) appears in 48.3% of records, followed by B60W (hybrid/joint vehicle control) and G06V (image/video recognition) at 26.2% each, then G02B (optical elements & systems) at 22.8%. Because a single record can carry several IPC codes, these shares sum to well over 100% of the 149 records in scope.
Shares are the percentage of the 149 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Driver and Occupant Monitoring Systems with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about driver and occupant monitoring systems and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records in this space
Driver and occupant monitoring using vision language models (US20250292595A1)
Filed by Nvidia and published September 2025, this application proposes replacing detection-pipeline DNNs with vision-language models (VLMs) that are prompted against structured inputs to determine whether a feature — drowsiness, distraction, or another monitored condition — is present in an image or video frame, with a designated output format enforced for downstream control actions.Abstract condensed from the published filing for readability.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20150379362A1 | Imaging device based occupant monitoring system supporting multiple functions | 147 |
| 2 | US20180231976A1 | Vehicle driving assist system with driver attentiveness assessment | 121 |
| 3 | US11639134B1 | Interior rearview mirror assembly with driver monitoring system | 63 |
| 4 | WO2014128273A1 | Imaging device based occupant monitoring system supporting multiple functions | 58 |
| 5 | US20210403004A1 | Driver monitoring system (DMS) data management | 47 |
| 6 | US20160150218A1 | Combined structure for head up display system and driver monitoring system | 43 |
| 7 | US11780372B2 | Vehicular driver monitoring system with driver monitoring camera and near IR light emitter at interior rearvi… | 40 |
| 8 | US20230131471A1 | Vehicular driver monitoring system with driver monitoring camera and near IR light emitter at interior rearvi… | 39 |
| 9 | US20230137004A1 | Interior rearview mirror assembly with driver monitoring system | 36 |
| 10 | US11827153B2 | Vehicular interior cabin lighting system selectively operable for DMS and OMS functions | 30 |
Citation counts are drawn from the same 149-record search and favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations — read them as a signal of influence on the field, not of current commercial weight.
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Three read-throughs from the concentration, growth and classification data above.
This is a supplier-owned field, not an open one
With 121 of 149 records sitting under five assignees, the core sensing and mounting claims — particularly around mirror-integrated and camera-based monitoring — are already occupied by established automotive suppliers. New entrants are more likely to find room in software and inference layers than in the underlying hardware architecture.
Growth is real but concentrated in the peak years
Filings nearly quadrupled from 7 in 2021 to 25 in 2024, with 2022 as the single busiest year at 39 records. Treat 2025 and 2026 counts as provisional: publication lag of roughly 18 months means recent activity has not yet fully surfaced.
Vehicle-parts claims dominate over pure vision claims
B60R (vehicle parts and accessories) leads at 48.3% of records, ahead of B60W and G06V at 26.2% each and G02B optics at 22.8%. The spread across mechanical, control and optical classes shows monitoring systems are still claimed as integrated hardware-software assemblies rather than as standalone algorithms.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to driver and occupant monitoring systems, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked leaders (67 companies in total) skew toward automotive-mirror and electronics suppliers, with a recent wave of chip and software players entering around vision-based inference.
A single supplier holds the largest single share
The leading assignee's 53 records sit well ahead of the rest of the field, reflecting decades of mirror-integrated and camera-based monitoring claims filed before the current vision-model wave.
A long tail behind a concentrated top
Beyond the top ten, which together hold 91.9% of the 149 records in scope, the remaining ranked assignees hold single-digit or single-filing positions — evidence of a field where entry is possible but the dense claim territory is already staked out.
Vision-model entrants are filing around inference, not hardware
Nvidia's recent filings, including its vision-language-model approach to driver and occupant monitoring, target the inference layer rather than the mirror or sensor hardware that established suppliers already claim — a route that sidesteps the densest prior art.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA Corporation | 2 | 0% |
| Magna Mirrors of America, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Magna Electronics Inc. | 0 | — |
| Envisics Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Gentex Corporation | 0 | — |
| Veoneer Sweden AB | 0 | — |
| Intel Corporation | 0 | — |
| HEARTRAY LTD | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to three follow-up questions worth running before committing a filing strategy.
Map the white space claim by claim
Under-claimed branches like rear-seat child presence sensing and VLM-based inference pipelines sit outside the dense B60R and G06V clusters — worth a claim-level search before drafting.
Explore white space in Eureka →Track the vision-model entrants
Nvidia's 2025 filing signals a shift toward software-defined monitoring; watching this assignee's filing cadence will show whether hardware suppliers respond in kind.
Set up assignee tracking in Eureka →Check freedom-to-operate against the top five
With 81.2% of records held by five assignees, any new filing in mirror-integrated or camera-based monitoring should be checked against their claim scope first.
Run an FTO check in Eureka →Common questions about driver and occupant monitoring patents
A single assignee leads with 53 of the 149 records in this dataset, well ahead of the rest of the field. The top five assignees combined hold 121 records, or 81.2% of all records in scope, which makes this one of the more concentrated corners of automotive sensing patenting. The concentration is heaviest around mirror-integrated and camera-based monitoring hardware, with the long tail of 67 ranked companies mostly holding single-digit filing counts.
Yes, based on complete-year data: filings rose from 7 in 2021 to 25 in 2024, a 257% increase over that span, with 2022 standing as the busiest year so far at 39 records. Counts for 2025 and 2026 appear lower in the raw data, but that reflects publication lag of roughly 18 months rather than a real slowdown. Treat the most recent one to two years as provisional until the backlog of filings publishes.
B60R, the vehicle parts and accessories classification, appears in 48.3% of the 149 records in scope, making it the single densest IPC subclass. B60W (vehicle control) and G06V (image and video recognition) each cover 26.2% of records, and G02B (optical elements) covers 22.8%. Because records can carry multiple IPC codes, these figures overlap rather than sum to 100%, which itself shows monitoring systems are typically claimed as combined hardware-plus-software assemblies.
The dense clusters sit in mirror-integrated hardware and core vision recognition, so the more open territory lies in adjacent areas: multi-occupant gaze disambiguation, rear-seat child presence sensing, cabin privacy and data-minimisation claims, and vision-language-model-based monitoring pipelines. These sit outside the top assignees' core claim scope and outside the densest IPC clusters (B60R, B60W, G06V), though a claim-level search is still needed before relying on that as freedom to operate.
US20250292595A1, published September 2025, describes replacing conventional detection-pipeline neural networks with vision-language models that are prompted against structured inputs to determine whether a monitored condition — such as drowsiness or distraction — is present in an image or video frame. It enforces a designated output format so the result can drive downstream vehicle actions. This represents a software-layer approach to monitoring rather than a claim on sensor or mirror hardware, which is where the established suppliers in this field concentrate their patents.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.