Infiniti's Jean Machine Rubs a Fake Butt on a Car Seat All Day to Keep Yours from Staining

Article: * [**Infiniti**](https://caranddriver.com/infiniti) **has a new robot designed to develop leather seats capable of avoiding stains left by blue jeans.** * **The new robot replicates a passenger getting in and out of a seat more than 10,000 times in order to test lifetime durability.** Car interiors live a hard life. Unlike most of the frivolous items we consume every day, the inside of a car is expected to stand up to weather, jewelry, bodily fluids, and—harshest of all—children. And not for a short time either. We measure the life of our smartphones and laptops in years, but our cars are expected to last for decades. Because of that, automakers have come up with all sorts of tricks to improve the durability of their vehicles' cabins, often with the help of robots. Remember the moment from *2001: A Space Odyssey* when HAL, the sentient artificial intelligence, attacked Dr. Frank Poole, sending him careening into open space? It was a terrifying look at a potential future. And while the reality of ceding control of our data and creativity to megacorporations is scary enough as is, AI-powered robots in the real world are often much more dumb than they are scary. Take Autocado, a robot Chipotle launched in 2023 for the sole purpose of cutting avocados—though it couldn't do so without human intervention. The robot still needed an employee to fill and empty the machine. Or, look at Taco Bell's AI drive-through assistant that was so bad at its job, a man ordering 18,000 cups of water was able to crash the system. When it comes to testing the durability of leather bound for an [Infiniti QX60](https://caranddriver.com/infiniti/qx60), that means a ridiculously funny buttocks-shaped robot whose sole purpose is to rub a pair of blue jeans on a car seat over and over again. For cars outfitted in dark cloth or leather, blue jeans stains aren't much of a worry, but anyone partial to a pair of 501s and a white leather interior can tell you that blue jeans stains are a real problem. Engineers at Infiniti apparently wanted to find a solution to that problem, developing this derrière robot in the process. With a pair of dungarees strapped on, the robot is tasked with sliding in and out of a car seat. The machine reportedly replicated the action more than 10,000 times while Infiniti engineers worked to ensure the protective layer over the leather worked correctly. Not quite *2001: A Space Odyssey*, more Big Mouth Billy Bass.