As Americans cram into ever-tighter urban living arrangements, a question has emerged: Isn’t there some better way to furnish a tiny apartment? Yes. The answer, of course, is robots.
Inside a model studio apartment at the Eugene, an 844-unit building on Manhattan’s West Side, sits a blocky, Swiss Army-knife-like unit that looks a little like two-sided armoire with lots of compartments. It’s called Ori. Ori runs on a track and can be activated by voice command...
— The New York Times
Companies like Ori and Bumblebee Spaces are testing out robotic furniture in major cities where living space is limited. The Ori system, currently testing robotically-furnished apartments in Manhattan, operates through voice command or your smartphone app moving the modular unit along a floor track. Bumblebee Spaces, testing spaces in Seattle and San Francisco, takes interior robotics to the ceiling by moving furniture vertically from the floor to being stored above your head.
16 Comments
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Disagree-
great if you don't have books, pets, clothes or the other accoutrements that make up a life.
Roomba 3.0
I'm reminded of my high-school gym teacher for some reason.
Danger!
An efficient robotically arranged interior of your apartment so you can spend more time doing what matters most in life, vacuuming.
Or, like most modern conveniences, trying to remember which button does what.
If only it was a mechanical steam punkish Olson Kundig gizmo contraption, that would be really interesting. Always those robots with their AI as the solution for everything, what if there's a power failure or something?
Coal-powered, with humans shoveling the coal.
As someone that lives in a studio...that thing takes up way too much space. And during a power outage, how am I accessing my bed?
Looks a little heavy.
I’ll stick with my manual murphy at probably 1/8th the cost.
1/8,000th the cost (not including electric bills, maintenance, and service calls).
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