Intelligent Active Wellness car seat
Image: Reuters via Youtube
It seems like, lately, car manufacturers are all about making the car smarter—nowadays, car manufacturers have promised and delivered advanced technologies to protect the driver from circumstances they can’t avoid, ranging from Blind Spot Warning systems and the simple backup camera systems on many new cars to nearly-autonomous driving technologies such as those at work only in Tesla or Google cars.
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But the thing is, all of these systems are focused on watching everything outside the car. While this may be fine in a self-driving car in the far future where you can presumably do whatever you like while the car drives, in the continuing age of person-piloted vehicles, shouldn’t there be some technology that keeps an eye inward on you?
From automotive equipment supplier Faurecia comes a new product designed to monitor your physical and mental status and act to keep you relaxed and alert: a smart car seat system called Active Wellness.
The system is fairly simple: two sensing pads are placed in the back and seat of the driver’s chair, which use a sensing system to track your heart rate and breathing rate. So, if you get angry, maybe the chair activates a massage function, or warms up or cools down.
However, the biggest potential benefit could be preventing drowsy driving. Using proprietary algorithms, the chair could notice you are getting tired before even you realize it, then alert you.
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So, while the idea of something “monitoring” or “keeping an eye on” you may make some nervous, this system could potentially save lives, as LA police Sgt. Juan Emerick believes.
I think it will be a great tool because a lot of those accidents happen from people falling asleep,” he said. “The car seat somehow alerts them. It’ll get them back on track and hopefully avoid an accident and save a life.”
The world’s first heath-monitoring seat could hit the market in two to three years.
News Source: CBS Los Angeles, Reuters via Youtube.com
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