Sometimes Pressure is a Good Thing
I recently acquired a Tactilus pressure pad so I could further my research into building better, smarter seat designs. The unit itself is just a thin pad of sensors that can be placed wherever you want to measure pressure. The readouts can be seen in 2d, 3d, and a myriad of colors and settings. It’s simple in concept, but digging into the units full capability will take some time. I recently spent a day with a rider, Jeff Waskowiak, just starting to play around with the unit and simply visually looking at various areas of pressure between different positions and seats. I had a unit very similar to this one in the years past that I used to measure seat pressure, as well as foot/hand pressure. It turns out you can learn a lot when you take the guessing game out of asking someone about their seat comfort. Asking, “How does it feel,” now turns into, “Well look at that” because now I can see again exactly how its feeling for the rider at an exact point on the seat. The pressure points are mapped out into pressure zones and are associated with a specific color…for example, if there is red, that translates into a certain pressure zone being applied at that point on the mat…with light blue being the “lightest” pressure displayed. I would say this is the adult version of the playstation…except this playstation costs quite a bit more 
