Spending long periods of time inside the car sitting in a near static posture does a lot of harm to your body, especially to your lower back and spine. Most high-end cars these days come with massaging seats that might temporarily alleviate your back pain and help you relax. However, if your daily commute makes you cover long distances and includes terrible traffic jams, the massaging function won’t be much of a help. Jaguar Land Rover has revealed a new pioneering car seat design concept that promises to deal with the issue right at the root. The prototype ‘morphable’ seat currently in development at JLR’s Body Interiors Research division features a shape-shifting system ‘designed to improve customer wellbeing by tackling the health risks of sitting down for too long.’ According to the British automaker, the seat uses a series of actuators in the base foam to create constant micro-adjustments, slightly changing the angle of the seat constantly. The tiny pelvic oscillations can trick the occupant’s brain into thinking that the body isn’t sitting but walking, which in turn activates a whole group of muscles and prevents them from degenerating from disuse.
“The wellbeing of our customers and employees is at the heart of all our technological research projects,” says JLR’s chief medical officer Doctor Steve Iley. “We are using our engineering expertise to develop the seat of the future using innovative technologies not seen before in the automotive industry to help tackle an issue that affects people across the globe.” The ‘morphable’ seat is just a concept study at the moment, and JLR hasn’t given any timeline for the innovation to find its way into production.
[Via: The Drive]