Lear's 'smart' bid to revolutionize the car seat

The way Karl Henn of Lear Corp. figures it, the cushions of a car seat potentially hold the key to a wealth of information about the occupant's safety, well-being and comfort.

Using a new generation of biometric sensors roughly akin to those in activity trackers such as a Fitbit, Henn, Lear's top advanced seat engineer, wants to gather that information and use it to transform the way car seats function.

Carmakers are listening. Lear says it has a letter of intent from one premium automaker and strong interest from a second to launch a new generation of intelligent seats in 2018.

"This is the biggest change in seats in the 22 years I've been here," says Henn. "When I started here in the early '90s, the seat was a metal frame with a piece of foam on top of it and a piece of fabric on top of that.

"We want to create a seat that intuitively knows what to do and when to do it. This should be a seat that has no switches, no buttons, no levers, no controls. You should open the door, get in the car and drive," he says. Lear is even creating a new brand of intelligent seats called Intu.

Rival seat supplier Faurecia showed its version of a smart seat -- the Active Wellness Seat concept -- in April at the Shanghai auto show. Using medical-grade sensors that can take readings through clothing, the concept seat monitors the occupant's heart rate, posture and other conditions. If the occupant is stressed, the seat can detect it and set off a blast of cool air or administer a soothing massage.

"It's part of a larger strategy to bring more intelligence into a seat, leading people to feel better at the end of the trip than when we got in," says Matt Benson, advanced innovation manager at Faurecia's xWorks innovation center. Like Lear, Faurecia is cagey about prospective customers, but Benson says the company is also aiming for 2018 production.

Other big seat makers such as Johnson Controls and Magna International are researching smart seats, which have implications in the developing autonomous-vehicle market.

High-tech seat concepts could help seat companies boost profits in a low-margin business. But smart seats face hurdles.

Seat suppliers know they must make a business case.

Raj Nair, Ford Motor Co. product development chief, says the company is interested in the smart seat concept, but only "if that cost-benefit ratio makes sense."

One dilemma for carmakers is whether biometric information can be gathered in less expensive ways, including from wearable devices such as the Fitbit or Apple Watch worn by increasing numbers of people.

Says Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. spokesman John Hanson: "Toyota is actively researching a variety of methods to monitor a driver's physical and mental state, such as eye monitoring, body temperature, heart rate and blood pressure, via a wide array of sensors, including wearables." He said he was unaware of research at Toyota into biomedical sensors in seats, but given that seats and steering wheels are the two primary points of contact with motorists, "I assume that such monitoring locations would be used."

Bob Lutz, former General Motors vice chairman, scoffed at the concept of smart seats in a CNBC interview in October: "Sadly, my take on this is that it's the answer to a question that nobody asked."

Mark Boyadjis, technology analyst for IHS Automotive, also is skeptical: "Car companies shouldn't be worried about biometric devices being embedded in seats. The analogy is to car phones."

Bulky car phones that were attached to the center console and were popular in the early days of cellular technology, went away as phones got lighter and people started carrying them in their pockets, he says.

"It probably makes more sense to facilitate the integration of wearable devices" into vehicles, he says.

But seat makers point out that people often leave their wearables at home, and not everyone uses them to begin with. Besides, Henn points out that wearables have tiny surface areas relative to seat cushions and backs, which offer 6 to 7 square feet that are connected to the occupant for the duration of a drive.

Says Faurecia's Benson: "The seat is the ultimate wearable device. As long as you're in the car, it's hard not to be on the seat. It's a great place to get data."

Benson says biometric sensors could be used in autonomous vehicles to measure the fitness of a driver to retake manual control after a stretch of self-driving or to signal emergency responders about the vital signs of an occupant after an accident.

While complete autonomous driving is still some way off, self-adjusting seats will be ready for production in the next few years, starting in luxury vehicles.

"What we're working on is a seat that will take your measurements and adjust the seat according to your measurements," says Ray Scott, president of Lear's global seating business. "We're working with a customer and that will go into production in 2018." Scott declined to name the customer.

Eric Michalak, chief engineer of advanced product development for automotive seating at Johnson Controls, says he worked on an adaptive seat while with another seat maker in the mid-'90s.

The seat went into production on the Cadillac STS and DeVille but was discontinued within a few years.

Said Michalak: "The problem was, when the seat automatically moved, people weren't ready for it and it freaked people out."