Actively Suspended Seat with Bass Loudspeakers

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016150313-A1
Application number	US-201514952889-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Nov 25, 2015
Priority date	Nov 25, 2014
Publication date	May 26, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

A system for a seat in a motor vehicle that has a cabin audio system and a bass loudspeaker that is able to generate sound in the cabin. The system includes a seat active suspension system with a vibration sensor coupled to the seat, and a controller that is responsive to the vibration sensor and that outputs control signals that are provided to an electromagnetic actuator that reduces seat vibrations. The active suspension system is arranged such that it can cause a change in the audio system.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . A system for a seat in a motor vehicle that has a cabin audio system and a bass loudspeaker that is able to generate sound in the cabin, the system comprising:
a seat active suspension system comprising a first vibration sensor coupled to the seat and a controller that is responsive to the first vibration sensor and that outputs control signals that are provided to an electromagnetic actuator that reduces seat vibrations; wherein the active suspension system is arranged such that it can cause a change in the audio system.

2 . The system of claim 1 wherein the change in the audio system caused by the active suspension takes priority over other dynamic changes to the audio system that are part of the audio system function.

3 . The system of claim 1 further comprising an engine harmonic cancellation (EHC) system that uses the bass loudspeaker to decrease cabin sound pressure level caused by engine harmonic vibrations.

4 . The system of claim 3 wherein the EHC system comprises a high pass filter to control the output bandwidth of the EHC system, wherein a corner frequency of the high pass filter is varied as a function of the operating engine RPM of the motor vehicle.

5 . The system of claim I wherein the audio system comprises a music reproduction system.

6 . The system of claim 1 wherein the bass loudspeaker is attached to the seat.

7 . The system of claim 6 wherein the bass loudspeaker is compliantly attached to the seat.

8 . The system of claim 6 wherein the bass loudspeaker comprises a pair of bass loudspeaker elements mounted in opposition such that vibrations from the pair of bass loudspeaker elements destructively interfere with each other.

9 . The system of claim 1 wherein the structure of the seat is stiffened such that resonances of the seat structures occur higher in frequency than an operating bandwidth of the active suspension system.

10 . The system of claim 1 wherein the change caused in the audio system comprises a reduction in the output level of the audio system.

11 . The system of claim 10 wherein the change caused in the audio system further comprises a change in the operating bandwidth of audio system.

12 . The system of claim 1 wherein the change caused in the audio system comprises a change in an operating bandwidth of audio system.

13 . The system of claim 1 wherein the seat active suspension system further comprises a saturation detector to detect saturation of the first vibration sensor.

14 . The system of claim 13 wherein the active suspension system causes a change in the cabin audio system when saturation of the first vibration sensor is detected by the saturation detector.

15 . The system of claim 13 wherein the active suspension system is caused to operate in a passive mode when saturation of the first vibration sensor by the cabin audio system output is detected by the saturation detector.

16 . The system of claim 13 wherein the active suspension system is caused to operate using the output of a second vibration sensor that is not saturated, when saturation of the first vibration sensor by the cabin audio system output is detected by the saturation detector.

17 . The system of claim 16 wherein the first vibration sensor is an accelerometer and the second vibration sensor is a position sensor.

18 . The system of claim 1 wherein a mechanical filter is inserted in the structural path between the bass loudspeaker and the first vibration sensor such that vibration from the bass loudspeaker that reaches the first vibration sensor is attenuated.

19 . A system for a seat in a motor vehicle that has a cabin audio system and a bass loudspeaker that is able to generate sound in the cabin, the system comprising:
a seat active suspension system comprising a vibration sensor coupled to the seat and a controller that is responsive to the vibration sensor and that outputs control signals that are provided to an electromagnetic actuator that reduces seat vibrations; wherein the active suspension system has a control loop bandwidth and the audio system has an operating frequency range that is constrained to be above the control loop bandwidth.

20 . A system for a seat in a motor vehicle that has a cabin audio system and a bass loudspeaker that is able to generate sound in the cabin, the system comprising:
a seat active suspension system comprising a vibration sensor coupled to the seat and a controller that is responsive to the vibration sensor and that outputs control signals that are provided to an electromagnetic actuator that reduces scat vibrations, and; an adaptive noise canceller; wherein the adaptive noise canceller is arranged to subtract an adaptively filtered version of a signal being reproduced by the audio system from the vibration sensor output, to reduce the component of the vibration sensor output related to the audio system output.

21 . A method of operating an active vibration control system and an audio reproduction system, comprising:
determining if an output of the audio system is detected by a vibration sensor associated with the active vibration control system, and; altering the output of the audio system in response to the determining.

Assignees

• Bose Corp

Inventors

• Howard Damian
• Subat Bradford Kyle

Classifications

• H04R3/04

  for correcting frequency response · CPC title

• H04R1/28

  Transducer mountings or enclosures modified by provision of mechanical or acoustic impedances, e.g. resonator, damping means {(combinations of transducers with horns, i.e. front-loaded horns H04R1/30)} · CPC title

• H04R5/023

  in a chair, pillow · CPC title

• H04R29/001

  for loudspeakers (H04R29/007 takes precedence) · CPC title

• H04R2499/13

  Acoustic transducers and sound field adaptation in vehicles · CPC title