Seats as a touchpoint on a car are an important part of the driving experience and Ford has taken seat engineering to the next level. According to an official press release, Ford dropped earlier last week (Oct. 27,2017) Ford dropped the details on its official robotic hiney they’ve lovingly and appropriately called Robutt. Made from a mechanized robotic butt and a bottom they’ve modeled after a large male, the robotic butt simulates a decade’s worth of sitting in just three short weeks. Check out the robotic arm as it does its monotonous task over and over again in the video below.

This robotic arm simply isn’t a butt plunger that goes up and down thousands of times a day, rather it has patterned its motions to match how a normal human bottom enters and exits a vehicle. Throughout its entire testing process, the Robutt enters and exits the seat being tested more than 25,000 times. Ford revealed that Robutt was used for the first time in developing seats for the 2016 Ford Fiesta.

“From the first moment we get into a car, the seat creates an impression of comfort and quality,” said Svenja Froehlich, a durability engineer, at Ford’s European HQ, in Cologne, Germany. “Previously, we used pneumatic cylinders that simply moved up and down. With the ‘Robutt’, we are now able to replicate very accurately how people really behave.”

According to Ford Engineers, everyone has a unique “perch pattern” that determines a distribution of forces that occur on a seat over time. Presumably, Ford can use information gathered from this data to engineer new materials and possibly new arrangements of foam in the seats to make a more comfortable and durable seat for the average driver.

We can see this Robutt being useful in providing usual information for seats that get a higher usage such as in taxi vehicles, bus seats, or people who have construction jobs where seats demand more durability.

Armed with this new information I do recall my latest rental, being a Ford Fiesta, having a pleasant seat experience as I drove from Merced, Calif all the way to Los Angeles, a six-hour drive. My bum didn’t feel the least bit taxed despite the Fiesta ultimately being a small commuter car. These buttocks gave it a “seat” of approval.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here