Software Aids Drivers' Sore Backs

A start-up automotive supplier has a message for driverswith sore backs: Move while you drive.

Comfort Motion Technologies (CMT), a makerof a software algorithm that helps automate driver seat movement, believesmotion is more important to spinal health than the driver's posture or even theseat design. The company showed off its software-based solution at the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) WorldCongress held in Detroit in April.

"Our ideais to move the seat automatically," said Christopher Meyer, product engineerfor CMT. "We believe if you move, it improves your comfort, reduces fatigue,promotes alertness and increases blood flow to the lower extremities.

The concept,invented by a chiropractor, combines a proprietary software algorithm with thevehicle's power seat hardware. At regular intervals, the software wakes up thepower functions, opening and closing the seat like a clamshell. The key is themotion of the seat bottom, which moves in half-degree increments until itreaches a total travel of three degrees. In addition to working with thebrushless dc motors that move the so-called "seat pan," it also interfaces withthe seat's recline motor and lumbar support motors, if the vehicle incorporatesthose.

"The ideais to redistribute the pressure points in the body and change the way forces travelthrough the spine," Meyer said.

CMTengineers say that by supplying motion, the company's patented software conceptprovides a function that vehicle occupants normally seek when they naturally movearound in their seats during long drives.

"The humanbody is very dynamic," notes the inventor, Dr. Paul Phipps, in an online videodescribing the technology. "It craves motion. Motion is how it functions well."