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Nissan debuted the seat derived from NASA research in the 2013 Altima, and the company now has plans to include it in many upcoming Nissan and Infiniti vehicles. The authors maintained that the new driving posture supported by the seat was close to the NBP documented by NASA in microgravity conditions. The results showed a 50 percent reduction in physical exhaustion during driving. The second phase of the company’s research, published in 2007, evaluated the prototype seat in dynamic long-term driving conditions on a freeway. The results confirmed that the seat supported the spine and areas from the pelvis to the chest and improved blood flow. In 2006, Nissan published the results of its first study on its new experimental seat with a two-piece backrest to maintain NBP. The company thought such a design would successfully minimize the muscular loading on a driver’s back, pelvis, and torso.
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To decrease driver exhaustion, Nissan aimed to ensure the driver’s spine was supported to relax in its natural position, as outlined in NASA’s NBP studies. Because Nissan had observed that a person’s posture appeared to play a direct role in how physically tired he or she became while driving, the company decided to use NASA’s NBP as a benchmark for a comfortable, balanced posture, with the intention of lessening fatigue on a person’s body. In 2005, engineers at Nissan Motor Company turned to NASA’s NBP research as a starting point for the development of a new driver’s seat for their vehicles. NASA’s work on NBP has governed the development of everything from work areas in the ISS to comfortable new car seats in vehicles here on Earth. Lastly, NASA has future plans to perform a new study on the changes that occur to body shape, size, and NBP onboard the ISS. In another posture study, researchers found the spines of astronauts lengthened in zero gravity on the International Space Station (ISS) - information that has since influenced the size and design of the recently developed Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. Specifically, NASA used the NBP standard for the design of space workstations and tools.Ī space shuttle study demonstrated that there is a range of NBPs for individuals. One of the first things NASA examined was the neutral body posture (NBP), or the posture the human body naturally assumes in microgravity.īy the 1980s, NASA had identified and documented the characteristics of NBP in the Man-Systems Integration Standards (MSIS), which specified ways to design spaceflight systems that support human health, safety, and productivity. NASA devoted more attention to understanding how a spacecraft could provide comfort as well as safety and function. Early space capsules were small and had a seat-driven design in which most of the flight activities were performed while the crew was strapped into their seats. In the beginning, safety trumped comfort in spacecraft designs for human space travel.