Seats play a critical role in driver and passenger experience of any car. Seats account for 5% of a vehicle’s total cost and 6% of its weight. As a result, they represent the second largest expense for automakers. Companies have started to construct new structures that will forever change automotive seating in more ways than one.  This project explores innovative technologies to realise automotive seat motion based on the use of smart actuators in seating arrangement involving product line seat electronics. Piezoelectric actuation is a promising candidate for such systems but some challenges remains to be unlocked. A main challenge is design a compact piezo actuated motor to provide the required power to slide a standard automotive seat. This has to be done with the minimum amount of motion transformation from the motor to the seat frame, keeping the cutting edge advantages of piezoelectric actuation devices. Another main feature of such a device, for safety purpose, is to remain locked if the electrical power is cut off.

Objective of the project is demonstration of automatic slider actuation system for automatic seating using piezoelectric actuators.