I really like your idea because I have often thought that car manufactures should make their seats inflatable for weight & space savings. Didn't i hear somewhere that the seats on the space shuttle are inflatable? Anyway one big advantage of inflatable seats would be they could reconfigured with the push of a button. Imagine a car that can have 4 bucket seats one minute or front & back benches the next. Of course "infant seat mode" could be built in too. The inflatable bladders are the structure of the seat, not the surface. We would need a thick very stretchable breathable material to act as a seamless cover.
Of course what I'm talking about would take $50 million dollars in R&D. What you're talking about (a portable car seat) can be had for $150 bucks
http://www.safeguardseat.com/go/index.htm
This is a portable child seat. I have two of then in my VW Golf (Twins). In terms of quality it is better than ANY other car seat I have ever used. It take me just one minute to install or remove both of the seats.
It's a great idea! That said, it would be a job and a half to convince me that this product is safe. And even after it has been inspected, crash tested and endorsed, I'd still wait around to get word of mouth approval from parents.
Someone posted above that this is already a product. I think you should shift the focus towards making a regular child car seat that has a built-in airbag in case of a crash. What parent wouldn't want one of those? The problem would be making sure it didn't accidentally go off (a fairly big problem).
I think a big key besides safety would be enforcing using the seat only for travel. In looking at a Rescu-Air product online they are use for ambulances a controlled environment, where grandparents, etc. would not be. Instead of the inflation valve system looking into the makings of bike helmet (insides and materials used) might be a good place to start.
I think this is a good idea - the execution via 'inflating' the car seat may not work but a collapsible car seat is great. I believe you have identified an issue - the space that car seats occupy. The difficulty of design/production/safety might make it valuable and hard to copy once it is made.
Being devil's advocate for a second. As people have already said there are a lot of safety issues with this idea. And any product in this area has to go through all sorts of crash tests and strength test etc. that cost a lot of money and take a lot of time to complete. For this reason unfortunately I don't see this idea moving forward as it is.
The notion of an unpaid community on the Internet designing a device that children's lives depend on is, frankly, very scary to me.
1) If the seat fails and a child dies, does Quirky get sued? Do we, as contributors get sued?
2) I don't think that a child safety seat, which takes real engineering know-how to design, and a lot of testing for safety, is compatible with the Quirky process. I don't think a child safety seat can be safely designed in a week.
Some thoughts...
1) Consider making the child's harness a soft fabric sack instead of an inflatable. Design it to double as an over-the-shoulder baby carrier. Include folds in the sack that fit over the car seat frame.
2) Make the frame like a half-Hovnanian Sphere, that expands and contracts to match the size of the child, kinda wraps around them in a half-shell.
3) Put slits in the harness so that the frame's harness points protrude through the top of the soft sack, which will allow you to slide a seatbelt through, or otherwise secure it.
4) The idea with the Hovnanian design frame is that in an accident, the frame will uniformly collapse around the child.
5) The challenge would be how to secure the collapsed sphere in a crash so it did not flop around and how to collapse it in a way that would not crush the child.
6) I could imagine the design using the cushioning of the seat itself to help protect the child and in some way, turn the child on its side when it collapses.
7) Regarding materials, NC State's Textile school does work in flame retardant fabrics, making apparel for fire fighters, etc. Their apparel design students, who study in both the Textile and Design schools, could provide ideas on construction. NCSU's Materials Engineering department could recommend appropriate structural components.
Hey! This is fun... : )
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I really like your idea because I have often thought that car manufactures should make their seats inflatable for weight & space savings. Didn't i hear somewhere that the seats on the space shuttle are inflatable? Anyway one big advantage of inflatable seats would be they could reconfigured with the push of a button. Imagine a car that can have 4 bucket seats one minute or front & back benches the next. Of course "infant seat mode" could be built in too. The inflatable bladders are the structure of the seat, not the surface. We would need a thick very stretchable breathable material to act as a seamless cover.
Of course what I'm talking about would take $50 million dollars in R&D. What you're talking about (a portable car seat) can be had for $150 bucks
http://www.safeguardseat.com/go/index.htm
This is a portable child seat. I have two of then in my VW Golf (Twins). In terms of quality it is better than ANY other car seat I have ever used. It take me just one minute to install or remove both of the seats.
It's a great idea! That said, it would be a job and a half to convince me that this product is safe. And even after it has been inspected, crash tested and endorsed, I'd still wait around to get word of mouth approval from parents.
Someone posted above that this is already a product. I think you should shift the focus towards making a regular child car seat that has a built-in airbag in case of a crash. What parent wouldn't want one of those? The problem would be making sure it didn't accidentally go off (a fairly big problem).
I think a big key besides safety would be enforcing using the seat only for travel. In looking at a Rescu-Air product online they are use for ambulances a controlled environment, where grandparents, etc. would not be. Instead of the inflation valve system looking into the makings of bike helmet (insides and materials used) might be a good place to start.
I think this is a good idea - the execution via 'inflating' the car seat may not work but a collapsible car seat is great. I believe you have identified an issue - the space that car seats occupy. The difficulty of design/production/safety might make it valuable and hard to copy once it is made.
Being devil's advocate for a second. As people have already said there are a lot of safety issues with this idea. And any product in this area has to go through all sorts of crash tests and strength test etc. that cost a lot of money and take a lot of time to complete. For this reason unfortunately I don't see this idea moving forward as it is.
The notion of an unpaid community on the Internet designing a device that children's lives depend on is, frankly, very scary to me.
1) If the seat fails and a child dies, does Quirky get sued? Do we, as contributors get sued?
2) I don't think that a child safety seat, which takes real engineering know-how to design, and a lot of testing for safety, is compatible with the Quirky process. I don't think a child safety seat can be safely designed in a week.
Some thoughts...
1) Consider making the child's harness a soft fabric sack instead of an inflatable. Design it to double as an over-the-shoulder baby carrier. Include folds in the sack that fit over the car seat frame.
2) Make the frame like a half-Hovnanian Sphere, that expands and contracts to match the size of the child, kinda wraps around them in a half-shell.
3) Put slits in the harness so that the frame's harness points protrude through the top of the soft sack, which will allow you to slide a seatbelt through, or otherwise secure it.
4) The idea with the Hovnanian design frame is that in an accident, the frame will uniformly collapse around the child.
5) The challenge would be how to secure the collapsed sphere in a crash so it did not flop around and how to collapse it in a way that would not crush the child.
6) I could imagine the design using the cushioning of the seat itself to help protect the child and in some way, turn the child on its side when it collapses.
7) Regarding materials, NC State's Textile school does work in flame retardant fabrics, making apparel for fire fighters, etc. Their apparel design students, who study in both the Textile and Design schools, could provide ideas on construction. NCSU's Materials Engineering department could recommend appropriate structural components.
Hey! This is fun... : )
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