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The dimensions of an automobile seat are important factors affecting a driver’s seating comfort, fit, and satisfaction. In this regard, seat engineers put forth tremendous efforts to evaluate the dimensions of a product seat until the dimensions are consistent with the design reference in a computer aided design (CAD). However, the existing evaluation process is heavily reliant on seat engineers’ manual tasks which are highly repetitive, labor intensive, and time-demanding tasks. The objective of this study is to develop an automated system that can efficiently and accurately evaluate seat products by comparing estimated seat dimensions from a CAD model or a 3D scan model. By using the developed system, the evaluation time for comparing 18 seat dimensions on CAD and scan models has been substantially reduced to less than one minute, which is 99% time saving compared to two hours in the manual process.

The digital evaluation process of vehicle-seat dimensions is an efficient and cost-effective way to achieve better seating comfort and proper fit. The present study is intended to quantify the statistical relationships between seat dimensions (e.g., insert width and bolster height defined at SAE J2732) and subjective seat fit (e.g., too tight, right fit, or too wide). Subjective fit evaluations for 45 different vehicle seats and the corresponding vehicle seat dimensions at various cross-sectional planes were collected by seat engineers (experts). The best subset logistic regression analyses were applied to quantify the relationships between the collected expert evaluations and seat dimensions at each cross-sectional plane. As a result, significant seat dimensions on the seat fit were identified and their statistical relationships were quantified as regression coefficients.

Monitoring driver thermal stress is an integral step for developing an automated climate control function. In this experimental study, various physiological measures for driver’s thermal stress were tracked while intentionally by altering thermal conditions of the seat with a seat air conditioning system (ACS) in summer and a seat heating system (HS) in winter. It was aimed to determine reliable physiological measures for identifying the changes in thermal status induced by the two seat climate control systems. In the first experiment, twenty experienced drivers drove a comfortable sedan for 60 minutes on a real highway while varying the intensity of the seat ACS every 10 minutes to incur ‘hot’ – ‘cool’ – ‘hot’ – ‘cool’ thermal stress. In the second experiment, a new group of eighteen drivers drove the same highway for 30 minutes while increasing the intensity of seat HS to incur ‘cold’ to ‘warm’ thermal stress.