Car Seat Prototypes, Developments and
Experiments.
It is absolutely obvious that
any backrest flexes the lowest joints of the spine when sitting. At least, it
is obvious if you know that the pelvis is a large structure attached to the
base of the flexible spine. However, as my back pain got worse from age 36 or
38, I increased and added to the lumbar support in my car seat. I didn't know
the structure of the spine and pelvis. I was a computer engineer. Why would I?
So, one day in 1981,
returning by car from a windsurfing expedition, my back was so bad that I lay
down on the living room floor and looked up "spine" in my 1930
encyclopaedias. (No Internet then!) With my engineering background, I
recognised immediately that any backrest would flex the joints between the
spine and the pelvis and that lumbar support would make the situation worse.
(See
If you don’t understand this
mechanical point.)
This simple point has now
occupied me for 36 years, half my lifetime! The following are just some of the pelvic
support chair and car seat developments that I did from 1981 till 2014. These
are in reverse chronological order as it is obviously the later developments
that will be of practical interest (hopefully!) rather than my earlier
experiments.
After I gave up selling car
seats or office chairs, that would be in about 2004, I concentrated on
developing adjustable pelvic supports for car seats. This is the last unit that
I made;
This unit can be incorporated into the design and
manufacture of any car seat just as lumbar support devices are now. I have a prototype in my Fiat Brava. Two pads conform to the normal contour of the
seat---
---until they are
electrically adjusted forwards to provide pelvic support.
The prototype unit measures
410 wide by 170 high with small electric motors for height adjustment and
pelvic support adjustment. This would
hopefully fit in any car seat. That
would certainly be a design aim.
To be inexpensive enough for
commercial viability, the unit would have to be designed for large volume
production and sale to many different companies. Shukra, for
instance, supply the same lumbar support units to the car industry, the
aircraft industry and the office furniture industry.
By connecting to existing
seats without any changes to the basic seat metalwork, I believe it would be
possible for car manufacturers to offer this unit as an option or an upgrade to
an existing model without retesting.
It would also be possible for
this unit to be supplied and fitted to existing seats by someone other than the
original car manufacturer or seat manufacturer.
This section of the website is being updated
frequently at the moment. March 2017