A Development of the Self Shape Adjustment Cushion Mechanism for Improving Sitting Comfort

Abstract

The seat comfort of automobiles is one of the significant factors for determining the driver’s fatigue, emotional experience, and individual space (which captures their individuality, rather than just a means of transportation in modern society). Conventional automobile seats could not provide seating comfort suitable for all drivers, in the form of seats that fit each driver’s body type and the difficulty of meeting individual needs. This study proposes self-shape adjustable (the SSA seats) seats that improve the sitting comfort, safety, and secure the stability, by adjusting shape fit to the driver’s body type. The SSA seats transforms the seat itself, in a way that improves the distribution of contact pressure and reduces sitting fatigue, with the pneumatic system. The transformed seats provide better sitting comfort and safety than the conventional automobile seat, by providing a seat shape suitable for the body shape of all users. It was verified that the SSA seats, proposed in this paper, have a uniform and improved pressure distribution, compared to the conventional seat, in various sitting postures; the contact area between the seat and user is enlarged, and the pressure concentrated on the ischial bone is lowered. In addition, it was proven (through user evaluation) that quantitative evaluation verification was the same as qualitative evaluation results.