Front seat development for autonomous driving: A case of innovative product development

Purpose: Automotive trends and the strategies of automotive OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) indicate that advanced and fully autonomous vehicles will appear in the market soon. In parallel with these progresses, customers' needs and expectations for automotive parts will evolve accordingly. Particularly, since the seat is in physical contact with the user, it requires major improvements by employing novel functions to meet these evolved needs and expectations. This study addresses these novel front seat functions and provides a real case of development of an innovative front seat for autonomous driving. Theory and Methods: In this study, initially, new design ideas were generated regarding the front seats to meet changing customer needs. Generated ideas were evaluated through the QFD methodology. And, in line with these selected ideas, the style design, CAD design, and finite element analysis and testing activities were carried out. Results: As a result of this study, an innovative front seat for autonomous driving has been developed, by taking the evolved customer expectations into account, and by verifying the design through finite element analysis and tests. Conclusion: Evolving customer needs for front seat by autonomous driving are assessed and a real innovative product development case is presented in this study. Future work can address other relevant interior parts of the automotive as to be appropriate for autonomous driving.