Do you ever go on a long car ride and try and fall asleep, but find that it is hard to get comfortable enough to fall asleep sitting up straight and without head support? We wanted to understand this better, so we had a member of our team sleep in a car for 30 min as an experiment. She took pillows and blankets with her, but it was still uncomfortable. She was unable to fully extend her feet, her back was uncomfortable, and her neck became stiff — and this all happened in the course of 30min. This is a real issue that happens all the time to people who have to travel far for school, sports, or even road trips.
We, along with some other students in our class, brainstormed a list of solutions to this problem. Some of our ideas involved redesigning the car, and some would work in today’s cars. One of the simpler ideas was to add suction cups to a pillow that would attach to the window. This would allow the person to lay up against the side of the car with cushion. We also came up with an idea that would involve having something soft velcro strap around the seatbelt. This would be a cushion with a blanket attached which would make it more comfortable to sleep in. Lastly, we had the idea to build a velcro pillow that attached to the bottom of the seat.
One of the ideas that involved a big redesign was to combine the front passenger seat and the seat behind into a bed-like thing. The idea was that seats would combine into a full bed connected by the headrest poles. Another idea was the idea of seat stacking. The idea was that the seats would move, shift, or stack into a bunk bed like system in the back portion of the car. We decided not to pursue these complicated ideas that involved altering of the frame of a car.
We realized that redesigning a whole new car was too complex since we had to decide what type of car we wanted to focus on. We considered working with sedans, SUVs, and minivans. We also discussed whether to try to solve the sleeping problem only for reclining seats or also for bench-style back seats. However we decided that we wanted to focus only on reclining chairs, that were already in the car.
We decided to have butt pillow for comfort and safety. Since this pillow would be filled with a substance that would prevent the reclining passenger from sliding forward in a head-on collision, this would be a barrier that would conform to person's butt and legs. This pillow would also have to be comfortable, so we considered multiple materials like sand, FloamTM, heavy cornstarch gel (the material in a Stretch Armstrong toy). Then we hit the idea of using a non-Newtonian fluid, like oobleck. These fluids are soft and smooth when the passenger sits in it, but harden on fast impact. This feature lets the passenger sink into it, allowing it be comfortable. Then in the event of a crash the non-Newtonian fluid would harden up and stop the passenger from sliding forward. We simulated this effect by filling a large balloon with oobleck and putting that balloon in a pillow, so that you could feel the effect oobleck would have in the car. Another benefit of having a pillow under the passenger’s upper thighs is that it raises their knees and slightly bends their legs. This causes their feet not to stick out as far, effectively creating more leg room. To make sure it was comfortable we personally tried using the pillow under our legs and it was comfortable. First we tried it with a normal pillow, then we tried it with oobleck inside of the pillow, and it was comfortable both ways.
For the seat cover attachment we decided to use velcro because this makes the seat cover easy to install and remove. The velcro strap keeps the seat cover upright and attached to the seat when the user is using it, but they are also able to remove it with no damage or change to their original seat. We also attached velcro to the neck pillow to allow the user to put the neck pillow at a position that is comfortable for their height.
