STTR Phase I: Child Safety Seat with Time-of-Crash Sensor for Passive Safety Systems

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project is to create a novel child safety seat technology that reduces the number of child deaths and injuries resulting from motor vehicle crashes. Impacts beyond saving lives and preventing injuries include reducing healthcare costs and advancing the field of vehicle occupant kinematics research. The direct societal benefit of the proposed advanced child safety seat technology is that, if successful, it will improve the effectiveness of child safety seats and reduce the likelihood of head injuries. The proposed project will develop an innovative sensing mechanism mounted in a child safety seat that determines when to deploy time-of-crash protections within the child seat itself. Children riding in child safety seats are presently not protected by advanced time-of-crash technologies such as frontal airbags and belt pre-tensioners. The implementation of this mechanism will be extremely challenging given the cost and reliability constraints imposed by the market. The societal and commercial rewards for success are substantial because the technology would represent a key performance and market discriminator. It is expected that the fatality risk for children protected by time-of-crash technologies triggered by the proposed system will be lowered by about 12%.