Swiveling Child Seat Anchor Guide for Secure Travel Positioning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing child restraints lack a reliable mechanism to securely transition between facing positions during vehicle travel, potentially compromising safety and ease of use when switching between forward-facing and side-facing orientations.
Innovation Solution
A child restraint system featuring a swiveling juvenile seat with a seat-back lock and stationary seat anchor that guides and locks into place, ensuring secure positioning and easy conversion between left-facing, forward-facing, and right-facing orientations using a hook-release controller for user convenience.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a swiveling juvenile seat is implemented to allow transition between facing positions, then versatility and ease of operation are improved, but reliability and security of positioning may worsen without a proper locking mechanism
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a seat-anchor guide channel as an intermediary component that guides the stationary seat anchor during swiveling motion. This guide channel ensures proper alignment and mating between the seat-back lock and stationary seat anchor, preventing misalignment and ensuring reliable positioning. The guide channel acts as a mediator that facilitates the transition while maintaining security, resolving the contradiction between versatility and reliability.
2Reliability
If a stationary seat anchor is fixed on the base to provide stable anchoring, then reliability is improved, but ease of operation worsens due to potential misalignment during swiveling motion
Solution Approach 1:
The seat-anchor guide channel serves as a mediator that facilitates the movement of the stationary seat anchor through a defined path during swiveling. This ensures that even though the anchor is fixed on the base, it can be properly guided and aligned with the moving seat-back lock, resolving the misalignment issue while maintaining stable anchoring.
Solution Approach 2:
The guide channel is pre-formed in the seat back with a specific geometry that anticipates the movement path of the stationary seat anchor. This preliminary preparation of the guide path ensures that when swiveling occurs, the anchor naturally follows the correct trajectory to mate with the hook, eliminating alignment difficulties without requiring manual adjustment.
3Reliability
If the seat-back lock and stationary seat anchor are designed to mate precisely for secure locking, then reliability is improved, but device complexity increases due to the need for precise alignment mechanisms
Solution Approach 1:
The guide channel acts as a simple intermediary structure that provides the alignment function without adding complex mechanisms. By forming the guide channel directly in the seat back, the patent achieves precise mating between the lock and anchor through a straightforward geometric constraint rather than through complex adjustment mechanisms, thus maintaining reliability while minimizing added complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
A child restraint includes a seat support and a juvenile seat mounted to swivel about an axis on the seat support. The seat support is adapted to set on a vehicle seat.