Drivers Seat

The Master Thesis project “Exploring Drivers’ Seated Position – Method Development within Automotive Ergonomics” by Nadja Lejon and Henrik Thorsén was carried out at the department of Product and Production Development at Chalmers University of Technology. The project has been conducted in cooperation with the Ergonomics department at Volvo Car Corporation in Gothenburg.

Volvo is expanding in Asia and to make it possible to develop cars for the wider range of drivers it is necessary to evaluate and understand how and why drivers are positioned the way they are. If an early evaluation of the car’s ergonomics is made, including information about reference points for the seated person, problems can be visualized to allow potential design changes before expenses go up.

The purpose of this Master Thesis is to develop a method that should give answer to how and why people sit the way they sit when driving, and be applicable to all of Volvo’s car models. The method will be used by different people at the Ergonomics department why repeatability and usability are important factors to consider as well as time. Finally the method is used for evaluation of one car model, a Volvo XC60.

The developed method is called SPEED, Seated Position Evaluation from Elicited Data, and consists of three phases; preparation, clinic and analysis. The clinic is conducted while driving and the analysis is divided into basic and further analysis where some results shown in the basic analysis are coordinates for eye point, heel point, H-point and distance between head and headrest. To complete SPEED, instructions, a compilation document, a questionnaire and a coordinates program are included.