The world's first driverless ride on public roads was performed in 2015 by Google with their concept car Waymo. The Swedish transport agency investigated what could be expected to be seen on the market at the year of 2020. Several companies announced that self-driving cars will be produced during 2020 with "Limited Autonomous Driving".

Autonomous driving is defined in several levels. There is no automation at level 0 and fully autonomous driving at level 4. Consequently, new cars may incorporate interior design with flexible seating positions. In order to achieve this, belt integrated seats, BIS, are a favored solution by the vehicle manufactures, because the seatbelt is mounted on the seat structure, independently from the vehicle chassis.

Autoliv, which is one of the world's largest automotive safety supplier, were interested to gain increased knowledge about BIS, and initiated this project. The project goals were to examine regulating laws for the design of BIS and to create concepts of how a seatbelt may be integrated in a conventional seat structure. Boundaries were set to limit the research on regulations and also the number of concepts that were generated and evaluated.

Ulrich and Eppinger's product development process was the primary applied method for the project. Experts at Autoliv and external companies were consulted for guidance and knowledge during the project to validate a more reliable outcome.

Three regulations that the authors judged to be important in order to validate a concepts performance were the ECE R14, ECE R17 and FMVSS 301. In R14, three static loads shall be supplemented on the seat. In R17, the seat shall withstand displaced luggage which is the dynamic scenario often used to dimension seats. The FMVSS 301 is a dynamic crash test that provides a good indication on the crash performance of the seat.

The concept generation phase was influenced by an external search consisting of benchmarking and discussions with experts about BIS, which provided a total of five unique BIS positions. The internal search resulted in 13 concepts which were evaluated with a scoring matrix during a group session with the project group and experienced experts.

The result provides a guidance of where it may be best to implement the seatbelt in the seat structure in terms of packaging, day to day use, crash performance and comfort. Concepts with a webbing guide across the seatback were considered to less feasible due to the luggage crash test in ECE R17, compared to concepts without. Concepts in the upper seatback area received general higher score, due to the increased ride-down efficiency and comfort.

The project managed to comply with the project goals within the specified timeframe and is satisfied with the outcome, which hopefully is shared by the customers, Autoliv.