Microprocessors and Microsystems 37 (2013) 10631072

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Microprocessors and Microsystems

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/micpro

The REFLECT project and the implementation of a seat adaptation system

in an automotive environment
Gian Mario Bertolotti a,, Andrea Cristiani a, Nikola erbedzija b
a
b

Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale e dellInformazione, Universit di Pavia, via Ferrata 3, 27100 Pavia, Italy
Fraunhofer FIRST, Kekulestr. 7, 12489 Berlin, Germany

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Available online 28 June 2013
Keywords:
Embedded systems
Automotive
Pervasive adaptive systems
Postural comfort

a b s t r a c t
REFLECT project aimed at developing new concepts and means for pervasive-adaptive systems. The
reective approach puts together different know-hows in affective and physiological computing, software engineering, physics and pragmatic expertise into a unique endeavour to design and develop usercentric systems that control the specic environment and react relative to users emotional, cognitive and
physical situation. REFLECTs core philosophy is to mimic the natural process of adaptation by implementing a biocybernetic loop that senses, diagnoses and analyses the user situation in a concrete settings
and reacts accordingly. To show how these concepts have been put into practice, the document describes
in detail how the seat adaptation system of the Comfort Loop has been developed in an automotive
environment. After giving a brief overview of the project as a whole, the paper deals with the denition
of sitting comfort and discomfort, then it presents the idea of the seat adaptation system, whose implementation in a real environment is extensively reported together with the description and discussion of
the experimental phase. In the last section comments from the nal review process are reported, and new
lines of research deploying REFLECT ndings are outlined.
2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Funded by the European Unions 7th Framework Programme
(FP7), REFLECT (REsponsive FLExible Collaborating ambienT) is a
research project that ran from January 1st 2008 to March 31st
2011. The following research centres (seven) and companies
(two) formed the project consortium: Fraunhofer FIRST (Berlin,
Germany), Ludwig-Maximilians-University (Munich, Germany),
Liverpool John Moores University (Liverpool, United Kingdom),
University of Groningen (The Netherlands), University of Pavia
(Pavia, Italy) and Institut Mihajlo Pupin (Belgrade, Serbia), Ferrari
S.p.A. (Maranello, Italy), Philips Research (Eindhoven, The Netherlands). The project was coordinated by Fraunhofer FIRST, in the
person of Dr. Nikola erbedzija. The aim of REFLECT was to develop
new concepts and means for pervasive-adaptive systems, by
researching ways of sensing users and their mood and intentions.
Different aspects have been taken into account: emotional state
(e.g. annoyance), cognitive engagement (e.g. high mental workload) and physical conditions and actions (e.g. postural comfort).
All these together with human behavioural patterns form the personal awareness of the system. Additionally, information about the
Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0382 985371; fax: +39 0382 985373.
E-mail addresses: gianmario.bertolotti@unipv.it (G.M. Bertolotti), andrea.
cristiani@unipv.it (A. Cristiani), nikola@rst.fraunhofer.de (N. erbedzija).
0141-9331/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.micpro.2013.06.004

surroundings is gathered and used to establish environmental

awareness. Reective approach combines different know-hows in
affective and physiological computing, software engineering, physics and pragmatic expertise into a unique endeavour to design and
develop user-centric systems that control the specic environment
and react relative to users emotional, cognitive and physical situation. The central philosophy is to mimic the natural process of
adaptation by implementing a biocybernetic loop that senses, diagnoses and analyses the user situation in a concrete settings and reacts accordingly. The loop cycles endlessly, performing self-tuning
with each consecutive iteration. In a pervasive manner, the approach effectively brings system adaptation into real-life applications, making them sensitive and reactive to human inner states
and behaviours.
Reective approach is an interdisciplinary endeavour aiming at
constructing smart environments with pervasive adaptive behaviour. A general purpose assistance should enrich control system
with implicit manmachine interaction sensitive to cognitive,
emotional and physical states of the user. The ultimate goal of such
reective assistance is to observe people in a specic real-life situation, diagnose their psychological and behavioural state and inuence the ambient accordingly. Reective technology is used by the
system to exercise pervasive adaptation through non explicit man
machine interaction based on context awareness. Recent results
demonstrate its effective use in vehicular domain and promise

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further applications in environmental, ambient assisted living and

health care areas. Reective approach deploys the biocybernetic
loop to make users psychophysiological data a part of computer
control logic, in effort to mimic the adaptation process, as it appears in the nature, and to apply it within manmachine interaction. The function of the loop is to monitor changes in users
state in order to initiate an appropriate computer response. This
approach extends the original concept to a wider set of input information (e.g. social and behavioural) allowing for a composite
analyses and decision making. It also takes results of affective/
physiological computing and combines it with high level understanding of social and goal-oriented situations. Biocybernetic loop
is implemented with the help of sense-analyse-react control troika.
Firstly, reective ontology classies numerous factors that determine users states, social situation and application goals, dening
elements for decision making. The ontology is then expressed in
a number of XML-based taxonomies that allow for a uniform
deployment in data acquisition, users state diagnoses and activation of corrective actions. REFLECtive framework is service- and
component-oriented dynamic and re-active middleware that runs
multiple biocybernetic loops featuring pervasive adaptation at different time scales. The software architecture is composed by the
following layers:
 Tangible layer a low-level subsystem that controls sensor and
actuator devices. It offers its services (sensor measurements/
actuator controls) to the rest of the system.
 REFLECTive layer a core of the system that combines tangible
services with users prole and scenario descriptions to perform
diagnoses of users state and provoke system (re-)action relative
to the situation and the application goals.
 Application layer a high level part of the system that denes
application scenario and system goals.
By combining low and high level services and components from
other layers, application layer runs and controls the whole system.
The REFLECTive framework has been developed using the software
components paradigm and implemented in the Java programming
language on top of OSGi (Open Service Gateway initiative) environment. Starting from scratch, the developed software framework
with numerous components that support affective and physiological analyses and diagnoses was deployed in a number of application domains. Numerous case studies were done to test and prove
the concept and a complex vehicular assistance prototype has been
implemented justifying a strong pragmatic orientation of the work.
The rest of present paper, in particular, focuses on and describes
in detail the seat adaptation system, which implements a biocybernetic loop aiming at improving the seating postural comfort of
users while driving a car (it has been called comfort loop). Besides using the REFLECTive framework cited above, the comfort
loop exploits a microcontroller-based electronic device which has
been specically designed for interacting with sensors and
actuators.

2. Sitting comfort and discomfort

Sitting is one of the very rst developmental motor activities
that human beings achieve. Moreover it is the posture people assume, on the average, for many hours during a day. For this reasons
sitting is considered as a very important task (a motor milestone)
and largely studied, for example to detect development pathologies such as cerebral palsy [13]. Sitting posture concepts are subject for discussion among scientists for over a century, the rst
article dating back to 1884, as reported by Harrison et al. in [4].
Most of the researches carried out in this eld deal with the assess-

ment of sitting comfort and discomfort, many of them trying to

give an explanation of the physical causes of discomfort focusing
on prolonged sitting posture situations. Some of these show that
one of the main responsible of sitting discomfort are localised contact stresses, occurring when prolonged pressures on the back or
lower legs reduce the blood ow at the buttock/seat interface
and in legs and feet [5]. To describe the constant slight posture
changes that subjects do while sitting, some researchers use the
terms dgeting or in-chair movement (ICM) [6]. The ICMs have
been directly linked to a state of discomfort and pain perceived by
people while sitting; in particular, an increase of the number of inchair movements corresponds to an increase of discomfort level
[6]. In light of this relationship, while sitting discomfort has been
traditionally studied using subjective rating scales, continuous
objective measures have been preferred in recent works, because
of sitting discomforts dynamic nature [7,8]. To perform continuous
measures, electronic instrumentation like optical systems to detect body angles, and pressure sensors systems has been used in
studies presented by many research groups. In particular, pressure
sensor mats are largely used to acquire pressure maps at drivers
buttock/seat and drivers back/backseat interfaces [6,7,917]. They
are usually made of capacitive or resisting pressure sensors (or
force sensors). Acquisition systems based on pressure sensor mats
give information about pressure distribution on the seat, providing
data in form of matrix images, where each element represent the
pressure value measured by the corresponding sensing element.
Generally, pressure values are expressed using a colour scale: this
ensures immediate and comprehensive information about pressure distribution. In this way, a visual interpretation of bare pressure maps can be performed. Such analysis has proven to be
reliable and practical for some applications, like the clinical assessment of tissues viability [18]. On the contrary, it results too complicate when a comparison between a large number of measurements
is needed, or specic issues (e.g. sitting comfort) have to be evaluated [13,14]. In this case, the use of synthetic parameters (peak
pressure, average pressure, minimum pressure) is preferred.
Among these parameters, the Centre Of Pressure (COP) is one of
the most used for the study of human posture, both standing
in that case force platforms or insoles are used [1924] and sitting posture [1,6,7,13,16,2527]. The COP represents the point
of application of the result of vertical forces acting on the surface
of support [6]; the latter can be the ground in case of standing
posture, and the seat in case of sitting posture. The Centre Of Pressure coordinates (in the XY plane, with respect to a pre-xed point
taken as a reference), relative to a matrix of n pressure sensors are
calculated using eqs. (1) and (2):

xCOP t

Pn
i1 P i t  xi 
P
n
i1 P i t

yCOP t

Pn
i1 P i t  yi 
P
n
i1 P i t

where Pi(t) is the pressure value detected by the ith sensor at time t,
xi is the ith sensors horizontal coordinate, yi is the ith sensors vertical coordinate.
Another useful parameter for studying the in-chair movements
is the COP speed: this value turned out to be helpful in our application, where a prolonged monitoring of the movement is needed.
Eqs (3) and (4) provide the COP speed along longitudinal (X) and
lateral (Y) directions:

vx

COP

vy

COP

dxCOP t
dt

dyCOP t
dt

G.M. Bertolotti et al. / Microprocessors and Microsystems 37 (2013) 10631072

q
v COP t v 2xCOP t v 2yCOP t

One of the REFLECT project aims is to develop a system able to

monitor the comfort state of a person seated on a chair or a car
seat, and to react properly, when a discomfort state is detected,
in order to improve the feeling perceived by the subject. For
designing such a system, measurements with people sitting on
an ofce chair have been performed. These tests allowed us to dene a set of COP and COP speed values, to be used by the monitoring system for the identication of discomfort states. Since the
REFLECT project foresaw an automotive demonstrator, additional
aspects were taken into account. As the body of the driver is in contact with the seat, the backrest, the pedals, and the steering wheel,
more than one surface of support should be considered when dealing with a car environment. In spite of this, results presented in
[12] show how a crucial role in sitting strategies is played by the
driver-seat interaction, whilst other types of interactions (such as
driver-backseat), seem to be less relevant. In these dynamic conditions, where many tasks and movements have to be performed by
the subject, the monitoring system deals with COP modications
(at driver-seat interface) owing to driving activities and not only
with movements strictly connected to a discomfort state. As a matter of fact, it is reasonable that an increasing pressure on the area
under pilots tights, caused by the use of the brake, the clutch and
the accelerator pedals, could be frequently detected. Furthermore,
a person driving a car is subject to different types of stress. For
example, stress can be induced by visual or acoustic inputs, such
as road signs, trafc lights or trafc jam. But there are other
sources of stress the pilot is often not aware of, as vibrations due
to the engine and, mainly, to the road surface state. Longitudinal
solicitations, generated by speeding up and braking, and lateral
accelerations, generated by turns, are other stimuli for the driver.
The driving style of the latter, the speed and the type of vehicle,
signicantly determine the entity of these solicitations. The presence of this kind of stimuli leads to a faster degradation of comfort.
As a consequence, during long trips, mostly when the road surface
is in bad state of repair, drivers feel the need of taking a break to
have some stretching and to allow oxygenated blood reach the tissues of his/her body. Once completed the identication of the main
causes that lead to a decrease in the state of comfort, we decided to
develop a vehicular seat adaptation system that took into account
not only COP and COP speed but also the accelerations along the
three orthogonal directions.

3. Seat adaptation: description of the Idea

A specic loop control system is the innovation proposed in this
work, in which sensors are used to continuously measure the posture of the driver, and, according to a proper strategy, actuators

REFLECTive Middleware

Accelerometer

UP mat

UP Controller

Fig. 1. Seat adaptation system: simplied scheme.

Seat

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integrated in the seat are activated in order to modify the seats

shape, and, therefore the drivers posture. Fig. 1 shows the main
components of the control system, whose core is the UP-Controller. The latter is responsible for acquiring signals from the sensors,
processing them appropriately, managing the actuators and communicating with the REFLECTive framework. To obtain an indicator
of sitting behaviour, the pressure map at the driver-seat interface is
achieved. The UP-Controller can get this kind of information by
means of a matrix of pressure sensors. The acquired raw data are
processed to calculate the Centre Of Pressure (COP) coordinates,
and then the COP speed. Laboratory experiments conducted during
the rst phases of the project [28] showed that the COP speed is a
useful parameter for detecting the dgeting of a seated person
when he/she starts feeling uncomfortable with the seat (see also
Section 6).
After calculating the value of the COP speed, the controller
checks if the latter exceeds a pre-congured threshold (which
has been determined by specic tests). If it turns out to be greater
than the limit value, the control system operates on the actuators
in order to induce changes in the drivers posture with the aim of
nding a more comfortable position. To accomplish this purpose,
a group of inatable cushions integrated into the car seat that
of the Ferrari California which has been used as the REFLECT nal
demonstrator are used as actuators. The UP controller has been
connected to the electronic circuits of seat to ensure the complete
control of those cushions. As already said, the driver and the passengers are also subjected to vibrations generated by the vehicle
and the different types of road surfaces, while sitting in a car during driving. The human body reacts with micro-muscle adjustments, to compensate for these kinds of solicitations. Combined
with the above-mentioned seated-position issues, this behaviour
leads to a faster degradation of perceived comfort [6,9]. Therefore,
in addition to the pressure sensors matrix signals, the UP-Controller acquires data coming from a three axial accelerometer mounted
on the seat. The signals provided by this sensor are intended to be
an indicator of vibrations transmitted to drivers body through the
cars seat. In particular, this information is used to give the system
additional functionalities for the improvement of drivers postural
comfort. As an example, when high levels of lateral accelerations
are detected, the lateral back cushions (one of the group integrated
into the seat) are inated to obtain a better stability of the driver
during turns. Moreover, since it is possible to assume that vertical
accelerations are mainly dependent to road bumpiness, the vertical
acceleration data provided by the digital sensor have been used to
implement another function in the system. The latter consists in
vertical vibrations analysis that allows classifying the state of the
road the vehicle is moving on. Providing information about the
conditions of the road to the driver could be very useful, not only
in terms of her/his own safety but also in terms of mechanical
integrity. As matter of fact, the presence of holes in the road could
represent a dangerous situation for the car, as they could damage
tyres, suspension parts, steering and car balancing. Making the driver aware of this kind of risk may lead her/him to assume a safer
driving style, such as reducing the speed of the car. Another parameter taken into account by UP-Controller is the position of the
manettino controller, that is a selector by means of which the
driver can choose among different settings of the Ferrari California.
Settings involve the behaviour of suspensions, traction control,
electronic differential, and change speed of the electronic gearbox.
It is therefore evident that the position of the manettino controller provides an important indication of what the pilot is expecting
from her/his driving experience. As an example, if he/she selects a
sport setting, it is reasonable to think that he/she prefers to focus
on performances instead of comfort, so in this case the system does
not perform any actions on the seat. On the other hand, if
the choice is a comfort setting, then a comfortable driving

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G.M. Bertolotti et al. / Microprocessors and Microsystems 37 (2013) 10631072

Fig. 2. (a) UP pressure mat and (b) inside view.

experience is the goal; hence the seat adaptation system has to react promptly. Finally, but not less important, the seat adaptation
strategy can use information coming from other REFLECT biocybernetic loops, such as emotional and cognitive, because of their possible implication in posture changes. As reported in literature, in
fact, cognitive load can affect standing postural control [2931],
and emotional states may have implications in human body posture [32]. So it is reasonable to assume that sitting posture control
can be in some way affected by them.

4. System implementation
As described above, the system control is mainly constituted by
sensors, actuators and a microcontroller capable of acting on the
seat according to the acquired signals. The developed system is
able to share information with the other loops within the REFLECTive framework. A pressure sensor mat has been developed in order to have the capability of reading pressures at seat/driver
interface. The choice of developing the sensor instead of using a
pressure system available in the market is mainly due to the need
of having complete access to data, as well as to share them within
REFLECTive framework. Fig. 2 shows the UP seat mat, made for
this project. It consists in a 4  5 matrix of Force Sensing Resistors
(FSRs) by Interlink Electronics Inc. (Camarillo, CA, USA). A FSR is a
polymer thick lm device which exhibits a decrease in resistance
with an increase in the force applied to the active surface [33]. The
FSRs used have a square-shaped active area of 6.25 cm2; the centre-to-centre horizontal distance is 5 cm, while the centre-to-centre vertical distance is 4 cm. Two sheets of imitation leather are
applied on both sides of the device to protect the 20 FSR, the interconnections and other passive components needed for the conditioning of the signal. A LIS302DL 3-axis digital accelerometer (ST
Microelectronics) [34], xed on one side of the seat, has been used
to measure vertical, lateral, and longitudinal accelerations. It has
been connected to the system through a synchronous serial communication. The UP controller uses the data provided by LIS302DL
to calculate, on the basis of a simple peak-detection algorithm, the
number of bumps per minute.
The latter is one of the parameters the seat adaptation strategy
and the road surface identication are based on. When needed, the
control system acts on the drivers posture through a set of actuators. They are inatable air cushions (named barilotti) built inside the car seat. An air pump is connected to these barilotti.
Fig. 3 shows a functional block diagram of the pneumatic circuit,
in which it is possible to note, besides the above-mentioned components, ve pneumatic valves. The UP controller can inate/deate each couple of cushions by acting, through digital
commands, on the pneumatic pump and the ve valves, in proper
combinations. This is possible thanks to a proper circuit which connects the UP controller to seat pump and valves. As presented schematically in the text box above, there are three couples of barilotti:

one (A) positioned in the seat, the second one (B) at the sides of the
backseat, the others (C and D) also in the backseat, but in the centre
(lumbar/mid-back region). In the rst implementation of the seat
adaptation strategy, in order to reduce the number of variables,
only the seat inating air cushions A and B are used. Furthermore,
only ON/OFF conditions are considered, the ON state meaning barilotti completely inated, while in the OFF state barilotti are completely deated. The seat adaptation strategy is managed by UP
controller that acts on the car seat accordingly to the signals provided by mat sensors pressure and accelerometer. The core of the
UP controller is a PIC24F16KA102. This is a 16-bit microcontroller
by Microchip Technology Inc [35], provided with several peripherals (see Table 1 for some details about its features), which allows
us to accomplish every task needed. Even if an 8-bit microcontroller could have been enough to fulll the nal application requirements, we decided to base our system on a more powerful device,
in order to leave open the possibility of adding more complex
features later on. In the current version of the system, the microcontroller sends data to the REFLECTive framework which is in
charge for deciding whether a seat adaptation is to be performed.
Nevertheless, it would be possible to implement a seat adaptation
strategy (or part of it) directly on the microcontroller if required in
stand-alone applications (or for delegating the microcontroller to
take decisions related to critical events that need a prompt
response1).
Moreover, the PIC24F16KA102 has interesting features in terms
of power saving techniques. In our application, the average current
consumption of the system (sensors and microcontroller), when
the microcontroller is in Run Mode at 8 MHz, is 6.24 mA.
As mentioned before, the UP controller can acquire signals from
sensors, perform elaborations on the acquired data, manages the
actuators, according to commands coming from the REFLECTive
framework. To perform these operations, an algorithm in ANSI C
language was developed by means of the MPLAB Integrated Development Environment (IDE) by Microchip. The communication between the REFLECTive framework and the UP controller is based
on a detailed commands list which has been dened on purpose.
These commands, sent to the UP controller by means of an asynchronous serial transmission, allow to: act on the actuators according with the rules; obtain information about the state of the
actuators; get data acquired from the sensors. The REFLECTive
framework uses the information provided by UP controller to put
into effect the comfort loops rules, and to show the system state
and the main sensor signals to the driver, through the REFLECTive
Comfort Loop interface. In the vehicle demonstrator, this application runs on three Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs). Each UMPC, through
its own user interface (Fig. 4) provides various kind of information:

1
Current implementation of the system does not take into account this kind of
events as the response time of the system is approximately 3 s when a seat inating is
needed, and 1s when a seat deating is needed. This is mainly due to the response
time of the actuators built in the car seat used in the demonstrator.

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1067

Fig. 3. Schematic of electromechanical and pneumatic actuators, with legends and list of activation combinations (the two pictures refer to the same seat).

Table 1
PIC24F16KA102 main features.
Parameter name

Value

Architecture
CPU speed (MIPS)
Memory type
Program memory (KB)
RAM bytes
Operating voltage range (V)
I/O pins
Pin count
Internal oscillator
Current consumption (uA)

16-bit
16
Flash
16
1536
1.83.6
24
28
8 MHz, 32 kHz
3050 (at 8 MHz in Run mode)
195 (at 1 MHz in Run mode)
0.02 (in Deep Sleep mode)
0.025 (in Sleep mode)
2-UART, 1-SPI, 1-I2C
1-A/D 9  10-bit @ 500(ksps)
2
1/1
3  16-bit
Yes

Digital communication peripherals

Analog peripherals
Comparators
Capture/compare/PWM Peripherals
Timers
Hardware RTCC

 The rst UMPC (which is the drivers GUI) provides warnings

and information about the drivers and roads state by means
of icons.
 The second one shows the cushions state and the level of the
monitored signals from the relevant threshold.
 The last one shows raw signals (e.g. the COP Speed versus time).
To enable/disable the loop and to manually modify the cushions
state, the user can press a button on the rst UMPC.
Reaction rules are used to implement the logic of the seat adaptation prototype. With regard to the vertical and lateral acceleration, thresholds were implemented; their value was determined
by the experiments described in [28]:
 Number of Vertical Bumps (NoVB) < 2 ? Low vertical solicitations level Flat road.
 Number of Vertical Bumps (NoVB) > 2 ? High vertical solicitations level Bumpy road.

 Number of Vertical Bumps (NoVB) > 17 ? Very High vertical

solicitations level Dirt road.
 Number of Lateral Bumps (NoLB) < 2 ? Normal driving style.
 Number of Lateral Bumps (NoLB) > 2 ? Sporty driving style.
The COP speed modulus is calculated by the UP controller basing on mean pressure data acquired every second. When required,
the UP controller provides the REFLECTive framework with this datum. The latter then uses a pre-dened threshold to decide
whether a seat adaptation is needed, and sends the appropriate
command code to the UP controller. From a series of in-car tests
performed with a Ferrari California and other cars [28] we
saw that a threshold of about 8 cm/s allows to detecting correctly
the drivers ICMs and to trigger the seat adaptation. Fig. 5 shows
the REFLECTive architecture of the seat adaptation system in the
Comfort loop. Note that, if needed (and if appropriate rmware is
written for the UP Controller), the Tangible Layer can autonomously process and can execute urgent (safety) actions reecting
the overall system strategy.

5. Results and discussion

Although it was not possible to perform an extensive experimental campaign on the nal demonstrator (due to the fact that
only one driver was entitled to drive the Ferrari California), tests
conducted in static conditions (driver sitting on the seat for
20 min while the car is not moving) and in dynamic conditions
(driver driving on a at road at 90 km/h for 20 min) showed that
the use of air inating cushions for modifying the shape of the seat
can lead to a decrease of ICMs. In particular, we found a reduction
of 40% of ICMs/min in static conditions from 1.490 0.191 ICMs/
min to 0.795 0.059 ICMs/min (mean SEM, number of tests = 4)
and a reduction of 25% in dynamic conditions from
4.754 0.514 ICMs/min to 3.580 0.100 ICMs/min (mean SEM,
number of tests = 4). We think that a greater reduction in dynamic
condition could be achieved by redening the position and dimensions of the cushions in order to better counteract the effects of

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Both for Study 1 and 2, the subjects were asked to seat at a desk,
and to execute a typical ofce task (i.e. reading a text, searching for
an online document); each of them performed the following sitting
tests:
 sitting for 60 min on a highly uncomfortable wooden chair
(Fig. 6a) and
 sitting for 60 min on a standard ofce chair with a foam-lled
cushion (Fig. 6b).

Fig. 4. Screenshots from REFLECTive comfort loop interfaces.

vibrations (that can lead to a faster degradation of sitting comfort,

as already explained in Section 2).
Nevertheless, various experiments conducted in a laboratory
environment demonstrated the soundness of the idea. In these
tests, a pressure sensor system was used to understand the behaviour of human subjects when sitting in an ofce and in a car
[28,36]. Here we report and discuss two of them: the rst experiment (divided into two parts) was aimed at understanding how
to measure sitting comfort/discomfort; the second was aimed at
assessing the effectiveness of the seat adaptation system.
Although the latter was conceived from the beginning with a
vehicular application in mind, we focused rst on an ofce scenario, which is a less complex environment with respect to a car
(e.g. it does require that vibrations are taken into account). The
study was carried out in two parts: (i) 10 healthy subjects ve females, ve males; mean age, height and weight ( standard deviation) were, respectively, 28 7.6 years, 174.2 6.7 cm, and
65 13.3 kg performed the two different sitting tests described
hereinafter and (ii) one subject an healthy male, 31 years old,
185 cm tall, weighted 90 kg performed the two sitting tests 10
times.

In order to ensure that the initial level of muscular fatigue was

the same for every subject, participants made only one test per day
and at the beginning of workday, and the order of tests was balanced. Testers were also asked not to rest on the backseat during
the trials: in this way we could concentrate only on the buttocks/
seat interface, and we also expected to see a faster degradation
of sitting comfort.
Pressure maps at the subject/seat interface were acquired using
a Pliance X system (Novel GmbH; Munich, Germany). Each test was
also recorded by means of a video camera. The pressure sensor
consists of 256 capacitive transducers in a 16  16 matrix, resulting in a sensing area of 392  392 mm2. They connect to an acquisition unit (acquisition box) which converts analogue signals into
digital data and sends them to a PC, where they are visualised
and saved through a Novel proprietary software.
Data were collected at 50 Hz sample frequency, meaning that
every second 50 frames of 256 pressure values were acquired
and stored. For each trial two les were produced: an ASCII le
containing data arranged in four columns (time, force, COP x coordinates, and COP y coordinates); an ASCII le containing data arranged in 257 columns (the rst one is for time, the others are
for the pressure values) from each of the 256 capacitive sensors
that compose the mat). These les were processed by an ad hoc
software application developed in LabVIEW (National Instruments
Inc., Austin, Texas, USA), for calculating the COP speed modulus, ltering resulting signals (since previous work showed that seated
subjects could move at frequencies approaching 0.5 Hz, a 3 Hz
low-pass lter was implemented [10]), and for detecting In-Chair
Movements. A peak detection function (Peak Detector.vi, available
in the LabVIEW signal elaboration library) was used for the last
operation. An example of COP speed waveforms related to a subject sitting, respectively: on the uncomfortable wooden seat
and on the foam seat is presented in Fig. 7.
GraphPad Prism version 5.00 for Windows, (GraphPad Software,
San Diego California USA) was used to perform a paired t-test in order to check differences between the two conditions in terms of
ICM number. Results show that the difference is statistically significant (p < 0.05), both for Study 1 [t(9) = 2.465; p = 0.0359] and for
Study 2 [t(9) = 3.089; p = 0.0129] (see also Fig. 8).
Our results conrmed what is suggested by literature: the number of ICMs is greater when subject feeling uncomfortable with the
seat, therefore ICMs can be directly linked to sitting discomfort.
Data also showed that ICMs, in general, are a consequence of the
increasing of pressure variance, the latter reecting the fact that
the body load is not equally distributed on the subject/seat interface, and pressure peaks are present in localised areas. The subject,
then, moves in order to diminish pressures in these areas. If the
seat is made of soft material (e.g. foam, which is the most used
for ofce chairs and car seats), these actions have also the effect
to let the seat regain its original shape. Unfortunately, especially
after long term sitting, the cushion lling material becomes too
compressed to be able of reshaping in a short time. This justies
the idea of seat adaptation: if the seat itself could modify its shape
when needed, pressures could be re-balanced, providing a pleasurable feedback to the user.

G.M. Bertolotti et al. / Microprocessors and Microsystems 37 (2013) 10631072

1069

Fig. 5. REFLECTive architecture for the seat adaptation use case.

Fig. 6. The chairs used in the tests: (a) wooden seat and (b) foam cushion seat.

To understand the relationship between pressure values and

ICMs, we also analysed pressure variance signals extracted from
some of the raw pressure les. Pressure variance is calculated as
follows:

r2 t

n1
X
Pi t  lt2

i0

where Pi(t) is the pressure value detected by the ith sensor at time t,
and l(t) is the mean pressure dened by

lt

n1
X
Pi t
i0

In Fig. 9, the COP speed modulus (dotted line) and the pressure
variance (solid line) waveforms, related to the same epoch of a trial
performed by one of the subjects, are presented. After about

45 min sitting on the wooden seat, the subject made two ICMs
(see COP speed modulus peaks in Fig. 9). About 6.5% increasing
in pressure variance can be seen in the 2 min lasting between
them: this phenomenon reects what already mentioned previously: the ICM, probably, is an unconscious action performed when
there are pressure peaks in localised areas of the body, mainly after
sitting for a certain amount of time on a hard surface. The increasing of pressure variance is due to the fact that pressures are not
homogeneously distributed at the buttock/seat interface. This nding seems to suggest that ICMs can be anticipated by monitoring
the pressure variance signal. This hypothesis is at the basis of a
new research which is being carried on at the University of Pavia
at time of writing: the nal objective is to develop a system for
the improvement of wheelchair users comfort.
In order to study the effects of vertical accelerations on a drivers posture, and to test the use of inating air cushions to modify
the latter, a Ferrari California seat (provided by Ferrari) was
mounted on a vibrating platform. Twelve subjects (three females,
nine males) participated in the study. Their mean age, height and
weight ( standard deviation) were, respectively, 33.9 8.4 years,
175.6 7.5 cm, 74.0 13.6 kg. None of them reported any musculoskeletal or neurological conditions that precluded their participation in the study.
Subjects were placed in the Ferrari car seat on the vibration
platform, as shown in Fig. 10. Each subject tested two experimental
congurations, with seat cushions deated and with cushions
inated.
Pressure maps at the buttock/seat interface were recorded
using the Pliance X system. COP speed components over time were
calculated for each session acquisition. Vibration was provided by
a dynamic vibrating platform made available by courtesy of Structural Mechanics Department of Pavia University. In order to produce the vibration, the software that drives the vibration
platform was fed by a le containing acceleration values previously
recorded in a car during a drive on a paved road at 50 km/h.

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G.M. Bertolotti et al. / Microprocessors and Microsystems 37 (2013) 10631072

Fig. 7. COP speed signals of a subject sitting on: (a) a uncomfortable wooden seat (solid line) and (b) on a seat with a foam cushion (dotted line).

Type of seat

W
oo
d

am

oo

10

10

20

p=0,0129
15

am

30

20

Fo

p=0,0359

Results of Study 2
(1 subject, 2 conditions, 10 trials/condition)

number of ICMs (mean SEM)

40

Fo

number of ICMs (meanSEM)

Results of Study 1
(10 subjects, 2 conditions, 1 trials/condition)

Type of seat

Fig. 8. Results from Study 1 (left) and 2 (right): bar plots of number of ICMs (mean SEM) vs. seat type.

Fig. 9. Comparison between pressure variance and COP speed modulus of the same trial.

COP speed XY areas values, estimated using the 95% condence

ellipse area (see [36] for details), were calculated for each subject,
in each condition. Only 10 out of 12 subjects data were taken into
account, as for subj07 data contained artifacts, and subj08 was
found (seeing the video recordings of the trials) to have kept a
non-natural posture on the seat. A paired t-test was used to check
for differences between the two conditions (seat cushions deated
seat cushions inated). Results show that the COP speed is less
while seat cushions are inated, and the difference is statistically
signicant (p < 0.05): t(9) = 2.719; p = 0.0371 (Fig. 11). This behaviour can be explained as a result of the body-support action given

by inated cushions, which help the pilot in compensating vibrations. Therefore, we could conclude that acting on the air inating
cushions of the seat has an effect on the sitting behaviour of a subject exposed to vertical vibrations.

6. Conclusions and future perspectives

The aim of this paper was to give an overall sketch of the REFLECT project, and to give a detailed description of its seat adaptation system. The latter exploits information gathered from

G.M. Bertolotti et al. / Microprocessors and Microsystems 37 (2013) 10631072

x 10 2

air cushions or bubbles), where each sensor positioned on the correspondent active element. In this way, when uncomfortable postures of the subject lying on the bed are detected, the mattress
shape could be modied for improving the lying comfort. For this
application, however, the way in which discomfort is detected
should be slightly modied: while in-chair movements can be used
as indicators of discomfort in awake subjects, we cannot rely on
them with subjects sleeping on a bed. Even worse if the user cannot move as he/she is ill and lies 24 h a day on a hospital bed, for
instance. Nevertheless, a REFLECTive system can easily be
adapted to cope with new requirements: the system architecture
would remain similar, the only difference being that a different
parameter (e.g. the variance of pressure data, as presented in Section 5) and different thresholds would be used for triggering the
bed adaptation. A REFLECTive hospital bed could be viewed as
a means for improving the postural comfort of patients in general,
but, also, it could play a role in reducing decubitus ulcers, a worldwide health care concern affecting tens of thousands of patients,
which is mainly caused by prolonged localised contact stresses
[37].

20

Tribute
15

The authors would like to dedicate this paper to the memory of

Prof. Remo Lombardi, head of the Biomedical Instruments Laboratory at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Pavia, who
passed away at the end of 2011. His ideas are at the basis of this
project and his lessons still inuence our work.

10

te
d

Acknowledgment

fla
de

in

fla

te

Area covered by vCOP (mm 2/s2)

Fig. 10. A subject during a trial on the Ferrari California seat mounted on the
vibrating platform.

1071

Fig. 11. Bar plots of area covered by COP speed (mean SEM) vs. seat condition.

This work has been partly supported by the EU Seventh Framework Programme project REFLECT (Pr. No. FP7-215893).
References

scientic literature dealing with sitting comfort estimation, and results of experiments conducted during the project.
REFLECT, as a whole, was rated as excellent by the reviewers,
after the nal review meeting held in Maranello (Italy) in April
2011, for giving signicant contributions to the state-of-the art
across a wide range of disciplines: from adaptive software architectures to user sensing, modelling and reective interfaces. Moreover, the automotive demonstrator, implementing the Comfort
loop and other biocybernetic loops, was much appreciated for giving clear indications of the potential of the concepts and concrete
implementations developed during the life-cycle of the project.
As for the comfort loop and the seat adaptation system presented
in this paper, the technical report underlined the fact that the concepts developed were very relevant to environments such as the
car demonstrator or ofce environments, as physical sensors and
algorithms were developed to measure user comfort. It has to be
underlined that our seat adaptation system has been conceived
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buses, for communication between devices) have not been
addressed.
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are not necessarily connected to the automotive domain. In fact,
the same idea can be used as a starting point for developing an
adaptive bed. Such a system should integrate a matrix of pressure sensing elements and a matrix of active elements (i.e. inating

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Gian Mario Bertolotti was born in Belgioioso, Italy, in

1975. He received the M.S. degree in electronics engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Bioengineering and
Bioinformatics from the University of Pavia, Italy, in
2001 and 2006, respectively. He is currently a Contract
Researcher in the Department of Ingegneria Industriale
e dellInformazione, University of Pavia. He has been
involved in research on adaptive control in pervasive
applications of the REFLECT (responsive exible collaborating ambient) Project, funded by the European
Unions Seventh Framework Project. His main research
interests include biomedical instrumentation, microcontrollers and microprocessors, signal acquisition devices, and wireless sensor
networks.

Andrea Cristiani was born in Pavia, Italy, in 1979. He

received the M.S. degree in Electrical engineering and
the Ph.D. degree in Electronics, Computer Science and
Electrical Engineering from the University of Pavia, Italy,
in 2005, and in 2009, respectively. He is now a contract
postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Engineering,
University of Pavia. He was involved in the REFLECT
(responsive exible collaborating ambient) Project,
funded by the European Unions Seventh Framework
Project, and focused on adaptive control in pervasive
applications. His main scientic interests are on biomedical instrumentation, microcontrollers and microprocessors, signal acquisition devices, and wireless sensor networks.

Dr. Nikola erbedzija works at Fraunhofer FOKUS

where he is responsible for new research activities and
innovative technology. He was a visiting professor at
University of Technology Sydney (19992000) and at
University of Arts, Berlin (20002008). His major
research areas are: Adaptive Control, Pervasive Adaptation, Ubiquitous Computing, Middleware Architectures, and Internet Programming, mostly applied within
embedded and real-time systems, ambient assistance
and empathic systems.