AeroNut: Responsive Soft Actuator Module for a Shape-changing Seat of Purpose Built Vehicles Kyung Yun Choi, Hiroshi Ishii, Noble Harasha
AeroNut is a modular actuator deforms its shape and stiffness locally in response to a person’s sitting location, body shape, and weight for a bench-type seat. This is for a multipurpose autonomous electric vehicle in a public space (named as Purpose Built Vehicle [PBV]). Due to the PBV’s characteristics, it is hard to predict how many passengers will take the seat and where to sit on the bench-type seat, however, at the same time, it is required to provide a secure seat support for each individual passenger especially when the PBV is on the move on the road. The array of the AeroNut provides a support surrounding the passenger’s body by dynamically deforming its shape to increase/decrease its local thickness. The accompanying GUI leverages the sensing capabilities by illustrating the current state of the seat in creative, meaningful ways and thus, allows the user to experience an active and reactive conversation with the system that is simultaneously visual and haptic.
This project has been developed in collaboration with Hyundai Motor Company.