Ford Has a Robotic Butt to Test Its Car Seats
And it’s called Robutt. No, really: that’s what Ford calls its mechanized posterior, which is used to determine the durability of the seats in its cars.
Despite the name, the firm appears to take its use pretty seriously. First, the automaker uses pressure sensors to measure how real people get into and out of cars. Then it gathers the results to create a model for a Kuka robot arm to repeat the process 25,000 times using a model ass that’s based on a large person. Ford says that represents 10 years of use, but the robot does it in just three weeks. Seats that pass the test are fit for use in cars.
Just earlier this week, Reuters reported that Tesla has taken car-seat manufacturing in-house over concerns about quality in some of its vehicles. Maybe it needs a Robutt?
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