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It's one of the OCCUPANCY SENSORS forming part of the Supplementary Restrain System.
The Occupancy Sensors detect driver's position (e.g. proximity to steering wheel) and whether passenger seats are occupied and trigger airbags appropriately in the event of accident. For example, if the front passenger seat is unoccupied, the passenger airbag would not deploy.
The Supplementary Restraint System (SRS) is fiendishly complex and can be difficult to troubleshoot in the event of a fault developing. On the X100, the OPS module which controls the signals from similar occupancy sensors to the SRM (Supplementary Restraints Module) is quite a regular fail. You'll be pleased to hear I haven't read of similar issues with the X350.