Innovation at its finest, Ford made a robotic butt to monitor swamp ass

Industrial testing is part art, part science, with a huge dash of engineering know-how. The tests performed have to simulate multiple years worth of abuse in a very short time, leading to some pretty novel ideas. One pretty innovative and stank-y test is this chair testing robot from Ford Europe.

Ford wanted a way to ensure that every seat for its Fiesta line would stand up (or is that sit-down?) over a ten year period. Enter the Robutt, a robotic seat testing ass that is based on the dimensions of a “large man.”

The Robutt gets heated to 96.8 Fahrenheit to simulate a real body, then almost half a liter of water gets drip-fed through it to mimic perspiration. The resulting swamp-ass twerks all over the seat, being tested 7,500 times over three days, as a rough approximation of ten years of unwashed heinie.

Check it out

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More about the Robutt

Ford plans to use this Robutt to test seats for all of its cars in Europe in the future. It has a pretty dim view of gym goers, saying that they might not want to (or even be able to) shower before jumping back in their car. I mean, who does that? If you don’t shower after exercise you’ve got more problems than just your car seat wearing out prematurely.

There are no plans to Robutt-test seats for American cars, presumably that would need a larger Robutt as the average large man in the States is considerably larger than in Europe. I guess that’s why every Ford I’ve sat in here felt like sitting on a bad velour couch.

Maybe Ford could license this testing to other manufacturers, such as those Gaming Chair companies. Besides our cars, our computer is one of the things we sit down most at, so I could see the testing being a good selling point.

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What do you think of this? Silly or smart? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere. His hobbies include photography, animation, and hoarding Reddit gold.