METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR IDENTIFYING SCENES IN A COVERAGE AREA

The invention relates to a method and a system for identifying scenes in a coverage area by means of infrared radiation, preferably for use as a proximity switch for automatically controlling the flow of water of basin mixers. According to the invention, a plurality of individual infrared transmitters (3) generates, preferably in a cyclically repeating chronological order, signals in the form of focused narrow beams of rays (9) in the coverage area (2) and the reflected infrared light is detected by at least one infrared sensor (5). An evaluation device (7) compares the signal sequence thereby generated in the infrared sensor (5) with the signal sequence of a static basic scene and/or with a signal sequence of reference scenes acquired at an earlier stage, those individual signals of the currently generated signal sequence and the reference signal sequence being compared with each other that are associated with the same infrared transmitter (3). The method is especially suitable for proximity switches that have to reliably switch under adverse conditions.