Furniture designers have a general idea of what makes for comfortable furniture, thanks to years of research, intuition, and user feedback filtered down into theory. But much of this has largely been driven by qualitative feedback instead of something more quantitative. That's what the R18 Ultra chair wants to change.
Built of carbon fiber and aluminum, adorned in feedback sensors hardwired to a Mac Pro, and imposed on by thousands of butts during the Milan Furniture Fair, the R18 Ultra testing prototype was developed in conjunction with Audi's research labs. The sensors are not only capable of testing the stress sedentary beings place on not only the seat, but also the chair back and legs.
All of this data has been placed into an algorithm, which generated the most efficient design for this chair (within a given set of parameters, of course), and the final design will be unveiled at Design Miami later this year. [R18 Ultra via CoDesign]