Development of an Automated Seat Dimension Evaluation System

The dimensions of an automobile seat are important factors affecting a driver’s seating comfort, fit, and satisfaction. In this regard, seat engineers put forth tremendous efforts to evaluate the dimensions of a product seat until the dimensions are consistent with the design reference in a computer aided design (CAD). However, the existing evaluation process is heavily reliant on seat engineers’ manual tasks which are highly repetitive, labor intensive, and time-demanding tasks. The objective of this study is to develop an automated system that can efficiently and accurately evaluate seat products by comparing estimated seat dimensions from a CAD model or a 3D scan model. By using the developed system, the evaluation time for comparing 18 seat dimensions on CAD and scan models has been substantially reduced to less than one minute, which is 99% time saving compared to two hours in the manual process. In addition, the seat dimensions can be more repeatedly measured than manual measurements by using developed computer-based algorithms. In conclusion, the developed system is particularly useful for quantitatively controlling the quality of manufactured seat products and for constructing a database of seat dimensions for better data management and benchmarking with other vehicle seats.