Many common carriers, such as passenger airlines, bus lines, and train lines, include a cockpit or command center where the pilot or driver controls the common carrier. In many cases, the typical seating height and/or lateral position may be insufficient for the pilot or driver to fully view his or her surroundings in order to properly anticipate, respond, and/or avoid incidents. In particular, the size and/or shape of the common carrier may be such that a portion of the field of vision is obstructed or difficult to easily view from the typical seating height and/or lateral position.
As a result, it may be desirable to provide a seat with extensive vertical and/or lateral adjustment options to adjust the seat position as needed to provide the pilot or driver with the ability to view the full area of vision as needed or desired.
In many cases, aircraft cockpits are designed based on a unique pilot vision reference. In other words, the pilots eyes need to be positioned at a unique location (also known as an “Eyes Reference Point” or “ERP”), which is the same location regardless of the pilot's physical dimensions. In addition to maintaining the same ERP, the pilot also needs to reach the rudder pedals with his feet and to grab the joystick or the yoke with his hands.
This eye positioning is enabled by utilizing seats offering wide vertical and longitudinal adjustments, as illustrated in FIG. 1. Due to the narrowness of the cockpit, there is no passageway between the seat and the central console. To allow the pilot get in and exit the seat, the seat has to be moved backwards and to be laterally stored. These seats typically have two independent main adjustments: height of the seat pan and longitudinal position of the seat. Storage is either combined with longitudinal adjustment by using J-shaped tracks which allow the seat to move laterally in the rear part of its trajectory (as shown on next picture), or provided by independent lateral tracks. As a result, the positioning adjustment currently involves many parameters.
These seats typically do not provide any mechanism to minimize blood pressure on a pilot's bottom and thighs. For example, as illustrated in FIGS. 2 and 6, existing seats have a fixed bottom pan (fixed angle β1), and some adjustable thigh support in the front part of the bottom pan (β2). Hence, the thigh support is not continuous because the bottom cushion shape does not match the pilot's thigh position.
These conventional pilot seats also do not provide a mechanism to adjust the seat pan length. As a result, a pilot seating position may not suit ERP if the pilot has to sit all the way forward, which can be an issue for smaller pilots.
Conventional pilot seats also have backrest recline capability to offer a relaxed position. However, because the back rest is pivotally coupled to a rear end of the bottom pan, the seat position moves forward when reclining the back rest, which reduces comfort. Also, a sliding effect appears due to an angle increase between the back rest and the seat pan.
Conventional pilot seats also offer head rests, but these head rests are typically configured so that they do not offer shoulder support in a relaxed position.
Moreover, the armrests are typically fixed, and therefore do not allow for lateral adjustment to provide lateral elbow support.
As a result, it may be desirable to provide a pilot seat that reduces the number of parameters to be adjusted to maintain ERP for pilots of varying size, provides thigh support that better contours to the pilot's thighs to reduce blood pressure on the pilot's bottom and thighs, provides an adjustable seat pan length to also reduce blood pressure on the pilot's thighs, provides a relaxed position that offers improved comfort, provides a back rest in two portions so that an upper portion of the back rest supports the shoulders of pilots of varying size in the relaxed position, and/or provides adjustable armrests to support pilots' elbow over a range of lateral positions.