SmartFit for Faurecia

Overview

Faurecia designs, engineers and manufactures specialty parts and products for the automotive industry. Faurecia came to Atomic Object for help building a smartphone app that automatically adjusts a vehicle’s seat to conform to the healthiest position for each occupant.

Business Context

Faurecia works with many luxury automobile lines to create highly-configurable seats. These seats can be adjusted to accommodate different body types to maximize comfort, health and safety. But the high level of customization possible introduced a problem for many customers: people were unable to properly configure their seats. This need prompted Faurecia to develop SmartFit™, an intelligent seat adjustment system that utilizes a smart phone application to hide the complexity from users, by allowing the seat to make adjustments for them based on a few simple input measurements.”

How it Works

SmartFit™ initially guides the user through an easy-to-follow process for creating a digital model of his or her body. This virtual model is combined with advanced anthropomorphic data to calculate the perfect seat settings. This tailored fit is sent wirelessly from the phone to the seat, which automatically adjusts itself. Individually tailored profiles can be generated for each occupant and stored in seat memory.

Challenges

Faurecia needed a functional prototype by the 2010 LA Auto Show. Faurecia wanted to further validate the idea with vendors and generate excitement around the product. This hard deadline placed a premium on our predictable delivery.

Another risk in the project was developing a smartphone that needed to communicate over Bluetooth with an entirely new piece of hardware. Because we did not have direct access to Faurecia’s prototype seat controller for the majority of the development process, we developed a simulator that would allow us to test the expected interactions of the controller and smartphone app. Our ability to deliver functional and well-tested software was crucial for the R&D nature of our engagement with Faurecia.