A Preliminary Study of Smart Seat Cushion Design

With the development of economy and the increase of social pressure, the proportion of working time for people is increasing year by year, which directly leads to the continuous expansion of the number of sedentary population. A large number of studies have shown that a sedentary lifestyle has become a global public health problem, which has a negative impact on human life. Unhealthy sitting posture can lead to many diseases. When people sitting for a long time, the unbalanced force may lead to some diseases such as sitting sores and lumbar disc herniation, lumbar spine injury etc. Therefore, it is necessary to study the pressure distribution in the sitting position. Smart seat and mobile application designed for sedentary people is an effective tool for the prevention of these diseases, the pressure center of the body posture can be detected and analyzed, in order to guide people to the correct posture, help prevent disease due to unbalanced posture.

The smart cushion is composed of three parts: pressure data acquisition module (internet of things), data receiving and processing module, data storage and analysis module. This study expounds the theory of sitting posture, explains the mechanism causing pathological effect and psychological effects of sedentary, and then makes a literature review, describes the research status of the pressure distribution of sitting posture, thermal comfort and cushion design, as a standard reference for subsequent design. This study gives definition and classification of sedentary population, puts forward the scheme of smart cushion and mobile application for the sedentary people, and focuses on the function, design and implementation of each module. Finally, it shows the hard and soft system, and tests normal subjects and patients with lumbar spine disease using the smart cushion. The analysis and experimental results show that the design of the smart cushion scheme is reasonable and feasible, and can realize the dynamic and real-time measurement of the pressure center in the sitting posture, and cumulative effect calculation.