SmartFit App, Bluetooth seat interface - Faurecia

SmartFit App, Bluetooth seat interface - Faurecia

If you're blaming your vehicle's seats for your achy back or painful neck, consider this: You might not not be properly adjusting your seats, and you could be in a seating position that's simply wrong for your body type.

High end seats, which bring fine-tuned support for backs and thighs, can bring unparalleled comfort; but they can also provide even more opportunities for misadjustment—as well as seas of confusion given the multiple memory settings in vehicles, some linked to specific keyfobs, some not.

Supplier Faurecia Automotive Seating has what looks like a good solution. Once you input some variables about your body into their smartphone app—as well as have someone take a picture of you from the side in a seated position—you start a custom tailor-fitting process. You make some other selections, then the app calculates the proper position and you can transmit those custom settings, via Bluetooth, to the car-seat controller.

With future technology in the works for luxury vehicles, it could automatically set your seat to that perfect position as you approach and confirm—probably increasing your safety, too, as it would eliminate the need to reach down and keep making small adjustments while driving.

"SmartFit takes advantage of a device that drivers already bring into their vehicles every day," said Faurecia, the company behind the technology and the world's sixth largest automotive supplier, in a press release.

Special physical conditions can also be accommodated, along with special enhancements for back issues or other ailments—including a performance driving mode and settings for lower-back therapy and Shiatsu massage.

Keep watch; this is probably a feature that's on its way to market within the next year or two.

[Faurecia Automotive Seating, via PR Newswire and Gizmag]