Modern car seats offer spectacularly high levels of adjustability. Often, this is a blessing: having 22-way adjustability means you’re more likely to be able to find a comfortable seating position regardless of your body shape. However sometimes having too many adjustment options can make it difficult to find the right position.
Automotive supplier Faurecia plans to improve the accuracy of seat adjustment with a new Bluetooth-enabled seat that can adjust itself automatically based on information it receives from your mobile phone. To use the system, users must take a picture of themselves sitting down, then enter their gender, height, weight, reach, the length of their torso and the length of their upper and lower legs into an app, which beams this data to Faurecia’s servers for processing, before the data is beamed back.
The next time you get in your car, your phone will form a Bluetooth connection with your seat, which will adjust itself based on the information it receives from the app. By default, the system places your seat in a position that gives you the best posture, but it’s also capable of moving the seat into positions that maximise safety, visibility over the bonnet or assist you with performance driving.
More interesting, perhaps, is the system’s ability to combat ailments such as lower back pain, stiffness, numbness of the buttocks or leg discomfort. The company envisages a point in the future where you’ll even be able to download enhanced seating functions such as Shiatsu massage via in-app purchases.
Faurecia plans to bring this incredibly clever, if undeniably convoluted, system to market in the next few years. Would you bother using it? Or would you rather just plonk your bottom down, push a few buttons and hope for the best? Let us know in the comments below and watch the following video to see it in action.
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