Posture correcting chair that tips you over in the direction you are leaning
Image credit: Nissan
Darko SavicJan 08, 2022
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A posture-correcting chair that begins to tilt in the direction you are hunching until you either straighten your posture or fall over.
Why?
Develop a subconscious habit of keeping your posture straight.
You either sit correctly, or you can't sit at all.
How it works
Any type of chair can be clamped onto a motorized platform. The platform has to be wide and heavy enough so that it doesn't tip regardless of what happens in the chair.
The platform strongly grips the chair by the central leg. From then on, It can tilt the chair up to 90 degrees in any direction.
When bad posture is detected, the chair gives you a few seconds to correct it before slowly beginning to tilt the entire chair in the direction your posture is leaning. If you correct your posture, the chair goes back to being upright. If you don't the chair continues to tilt until you tip over. The chair stops at 90 degrees and remains there until you get out of it. Then it moves back to upright position.
Posture recognition software
There is probably a simpler way of going about it, but for the moment I can think of this:
One camera is placed in front of the person (on the desk, under/above the screen, etc), the other is placed on the side.
The initialization process asks the person to sit perfectly upright in a way that is comfortable for them. They confirm the perfect posture by clicking on a button. The process is repeated a few times throughout the day so that the software learns what normal/ideal conditions are for each individual.
From then on, if the person tilts their head, shoulders or spine in one direction and keeps it there for more than several seconds, the chair begins to tilt in that direction. The only way to stop/reset the process is to sit upright again.
Perhaps, instead of tipping, such a chair could remind you about your posture by having an alarm go off or vibrating whenever certain calibrated pressure points are touched for a duration of time. This approach would be less extreme, so perhaps more suitable for a shared workspace. Additionally, it wouldn't need a counterbalance, which seems to be one of the main concerns regarding the original idea.
The pressure points will be calibrated to match the body of the chair's owner simply by having him/her sit upright in the chair, after that, when it would be able to detect if you sit differently and notify you with a sound, a vibration or even a message to your desktop or phone, reminding you to correct your posture.
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Darko Savic3 years ago
Any passive notification would soon be just an annoyance, as dannyweir said:
The first thought with a notification is "where do you turn it off"? The first thought when your chair starts to move in the direction you are already leaning is to lean in the opposite direction. Since the danger doesn't stop until you sit up straight, you will fall unless you do what needs to be done. "Where does this turn off" is a secondary thought after you fix the imminent problem first. Turning it off doesn't take effect fast enough for you not to fall.
I wouldn't even offer the option to turn it off. If you can't do it, just replace the chair. When you're selling or giving it away to the next person, you get to rationalize why this wasn't for you. That would be an interesting moment - suggesting it to someone else while knowing that you couldn't pull it off.
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Spook Louw3 years ago
Darko Savic I get it, I just think that if you are engaged with important work it would be even more annoying to keep falling off your chair, with no option of turning it off. Your idea is undoubtedly more effective, providing people don't discard the chairs as soon as they become annoyed (this will be determined by how committed different people are to improving their posture.)
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Darko Savic3 years ago
Spook Louw nobody would ever fall. It moves slowly. You would get uncomfortable and sit up straight long before you fell.
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General comments
Darryl Koh Yuan Jie3 years ago
I believe that it is possible to detect the centre of gravity of a person through sensors in order to correct their posture, as mentioned by others on this thread. Perhaps, something of reference could be pilot or simulator seats which often have an in built gyroscope of sorts that correct the pilot's seat during flight. These seats can hopefully be reprogrammed to aid in dealing with bad posture and correcting them.
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Darko Savic3 years ago
Darryl Koh Yuan Jie I can imagine an edge case scenario where the person hunches in on themselves to retain the center of gravity but still have bad posture
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Darryl Koh Yuan Jie3 years ago
Darko Savic
I can thing of two ways to go about preventing this issue.
One would be a sensor of sort at the head or neck area that detects the distance between your head and the head rest. If it is further than a certain distance, say an inch or two, a bump will be formed(similar to massage chairs) at the area of the chair that comes in contact with the spine to remind the user to sit straight. It can be done in such a way that while uncomfortable, it is able to remind the user to sit straight and once the user does so, the bump disappears.
Another solution would be to provide a table or work desk that comes along with the chair as a bundle to ensure the proper distance between the users and their computers. Often bad posture happens when the angle and distance between their eyes and the computer are not at the optimal values. The tables can be adjustable too,so that the height of the user will not be an issue.
Or perhaps, it could even be a combination of both!
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jnikola3 years ago
I am sure the idea would successfully deal with the problem of bad posture since you would be falling all the time if your posture is bad. Although I am not a physicist, I think the base should be really heavy in order to keep the chair from falling along and eventually breaking. When I say heavy, I mean almost the weight of a person. Can we somehow deal with the balance in another way? It wouldn't be convenient to carry your new 80-kilo-chair to the third floor, right?
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Aashi Agarwal3 years ago
Darko Savic I love that the idea is fun and it comples you to improve your posture! For the posture recognition system I think one could use load distribution sensors placed strategically, to deduce deviation from correct posture. I found a paper that talks about this along with several other methods like image processing and wearable clothing with sensors. You can check it out to see if it helps.
Darko Savic Jan 08, 2022
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