5 ms·

Robot Furniture

45 points by jeffreyrogers 8y ago

elicash 8y ago
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2009/04/curator-finds-murphy-beds-place-in-american-history/ http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2009/04/curato... "Inventor William Lawrence Murphy (1856-1957) began tinkering with hideaway beds while living in a one-room apartment in San Francisco in the late 19th century. He was falling for a young opera singer and courting customs at that time would not permit a lady to enter a gentleman’s bedroom. But according to family legend, Murphy’s limited finances and a strict moral code didn’t spoil his chance at love. His invention allowed him to stow his bed in his closet, transforming his one-room apartment from a bedroom into a parlor. "The couple married in 1900."
- gwern 8y ago
  On the other hand, consider the fate of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr. , who survived his own inventions of CFCs and leaded gasoline (leading to lead poisoning), only to succumb to his invention of furniture: > In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted poliomyelitis, which left him severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to help others lift him from bed. In 1944, he was entangled in the device and died of strangulation.[15][16][17]
- mpnordland 8y ago
  And they say you can't solve societal problems with technology.
andbberger 8y ago
This meme seems to crop up every couple years, but AFAIK there is no affordable way to obtain such products. Haven't found anyone who actually sells beds that retract into the ceiling. https://resourcefurniture.com/ https://resourcefurniture.com/ sells nicely designed but crushingly expensive murphy bed type things. Anyone know where I can get a retractable bed set up for less than a thousand?
mattferderer 8y ago
"YES! More things to bump my head into!" - Tall People
- nikkiofearth 8y ago
  LOL! as a short person, I always forget this.
claudiulodro 8y ago
This is an interesting idea if you have high ceilings. In my experience, a room small enough to make this system worth using would also have low ceilings. My ceilings are 8 ft, so unless the proposed bed and ceiling boxes are less than 2 feet tall I'm going to be hitting my head on them all the time. To be honest, this seems like the Juicero of furniture: an expensive tech solution to a non-tech problem. The problem is solved for a fraction of the cost with a daybed that has storage underneath.[1] It is, after all, still a combination sleep/living area with storage room for clothes. As someone working on a furniture solution for small spaces and with a history of professional furniture building, turning furniture into built-in moving electronics is IMO not the solution: 1. It increases the cost of the furniture to be out of the range of your customers, who are typically in a small space because they do not have a ton of extra money. 2. Good luck getting your landlord to approve bolting large furniture to your ceiling, and what do you do when you move? [1] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70320135/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70320135/
- teddyh 8y ago
  Or a simple loft bed: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/bedroom/19039/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/be...
- jonknee 8y ago
  > Good luck getting your landlord to approve bolting large furniture to your ceiling, and what do you do when you move? The article sounds like this is a feature of the apartment (to help make up for small unit sizes).
  - claudiulodro 8y ago
    In that case, good luck getting your landlord out to fix the bed if it gets stuck in the ceiling! :)
    - sharemywin 8y ago
      ... or your pinned against the wall and can't get out.
brink 8y ago
Will I be able to sleep in my bed during a power outage?
- Cyphase 8y ago
  Sure, if you can reach the mechanical release. I'd be more worried about DoS[0] attacks against the cloud service that prevent me from using the app to call down my bed and other furniture. Or someone hacking in and pulling my bed up with me in it. What a nightmare that would be. [0] Denial of Sleep
tomatotomato37 8y ago
I guess I'm not the only one who thought the next step for home furnishings was giving them the ability to break down at the worst possible time.
niftich 8y ago
Beds take up a lot of floor area, but lifting them off the floor with expensive machinery you must install in your ceiling is hardly a compelling solution. It's the prevalence of innerspring mattresses that's responsible for contemporary bedding being unwieldy. An innerspring mattress is constructed to predetermined form factor, and is resistant to folding or rolling or other mechanical ways of conserving space. Getting it out of the way means manipulating the entire unit as one, which absent a pulley system installed in your ceiling typically means rotating it onto a weak edge, where it can barely remain upright; this can be rectified by a platform that holds that the mattress in place while it is pivoted upright into a recess in the wall, in an established, if outdated design. If you forego monolithic innerspring mattresses, you have vastly more options in moving bedding when it's not needed.
- fermienrico 8y ago
  "you must install in your ceiling is hardly a compelling solution." - why? we have "expensive" machinery to open our garage doors. Why specifically do you think it is not a compelling solution? I personally think this is a great idea as ceilings are useless for the most part and that space can be used for something else - like storing the entire bed.
  - cmontella 8y ago
    > ceilings are useless for the most part I would say they are underutilized. Ceilings are certainly useful for preventing rain from falling on our heads ;)
    - hannasanarion 8y ago
      Those are roofs. Ceilings are basically just for looks.
      - cmontella 8y ago
        Ha touche. Although I would say my ceiling is just the inside part of my roof :P I guess it depends on how your house is made.
dwighttk 8y ago
This sounds great until you realize you have to put every non-robotic thing away into its tiny little container before you can do anything pertaining to changing the room around.
paul7986 8y ago
Could it not come crashing down upon you? "I wanted to sit on my couch, but it fell and nearly killed me... damn robot furniture."
- adrianmonk 8y ago
  It could, but it shouldn't if properly made. For one thing, it's got 4 straps. If any 3 straps or any two opposing corner straps are intact, then it should probably not fall down. So there's some redundancy. Aside from that, use a worm drive[1] between the motor and the pulleys. As long as the gearbox is intact, the weight of the furniture won't be able to turn the output gear. If you want more assurance than that, put some kind of extra brake or lock on the pulleys or drive shaft. Maybe a pawl[2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worm_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worm_drive [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawl
buboard 8y ago
Polymorphic homes maybe, but what's robotic about these? A robot would self-clean for example. this accomplishes the same and doesnt require any motors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juWaO5TJS00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juWaO5TJS00
pg_bot 8y ago
While this is an interesting curiosity, it is inferior to the Murphy bed. People move, and like to rearrange their furniture in their own places. The straps are unpleasant to look at, and likely have a higher failure rate due to their complexity. There is no way this will see mass adoption, if that's their goal I think they should do more customer research.
quizme2000 8y ago
I've watched this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI3Zo3Ax494 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI3Zo3Ax494 on "This Old House" years ago and it also stood out as really well designed, instead of a product looking for a problem to solve. The issue is always cost but this system seemed more on track with reality.
justifier 8y ago
i built something similar for a home project i ended up taking it down due to concern of having all of that weight above me when a huge mass is suspended above you the potential gravitational energy becomes very palapable
singularity2001 8y ago
who doesn't want to stand below a 200kg Alexa-controlled piece of furniture hanging from the ceiling. Alexa drop it!
Animats 8y ago
Nissan did build some robotic office chairs.[1] They rearrange themselves for meetings. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLEgvD7iG-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLEgvD7iG-M
- nikkiofearth 8y ago
  i wish. thats staged
FiatLuxDave 8y ago
This reminds me of a very cool apartment I visited many years ago. I used to party with some SCAD kids in Savannah. Two interior design majors I knew had gotten themselves a small apartment and a very tolerant landlord. The bedroom was amazing! The bed hung from the ceiling on strong cables, similar to the bed in the article, but the sleeping position was about 0.8 meters high rather than on the floor. In addition, the floor of the room was not flat, but made up of various levels of platforms. The lounge chair was up in one of the upper corners of the room, and you could watch the TV mounted at the same level over the heads of people occupying the floor space. They also had a stripper pole in the front room, which was great for parties. But it was the bedroom with the hanging bed which really impressed me.

45 points by jeffreyrogers 8y ago

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2009/04/curator-finds-murphy-beds-place-in-american-history/ http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2009/04/curato... "Inventor William Lawrence Murphy (1856-1957) began tinkering with hideaway beds while living in a one-room apartment in San Francisco in the late 19th century. He was falling for a young opera singer and courting customs at that time would not permit a lady to enter a gentleman’s bedroom. But according to family legend, Murphy’s limited finances and a strict moral code didn’t spoil his chance at love. His invention allowed him to stow his bed in his closet, transforming his one-room apartment from a bedroom into a parlor. "The couple married in 1900."

gwern 8y ago
On the other hand, consider the fate of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr. , who survived his own inventions of CFCs and leaded gasoline (leading to lead poisoning), only to succumb to his invention of furniture: > In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted poliomyelitis, which left him severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to help others lift him from bed. In 1944, he was entangled in the device and died of strangulation.[15][16][17]
mpnordland 8y ago
And they say you can't solve societal problems with technology.

andbberger 8y ago

This meme seems to crop up every couple years, but AFAIK there is no affordable way to obtain such products. Haven't found anyone who actually sells beds that retract into the ceiling. https://resourcefurniture.com/ https://resourcefurniture.com/ sells nicely designed but crushingly expensive murphy bed type things. Anyone know where I can get a retractable bed set up for less than a thousand?

mattferderer 8y ago

"YES! More things to bump my head into!" - Tall People

nikkiofearth 8y ago
LOL! as a short person, I always forget this.

claudiulodro 8y ago

This is an interesting idea if you have high ceilings. In my experience, a room small enough to make this system worth using would also have low ceilings. My ceilings are 8 ft, so unless the proposed bed and ceiling boxes are less than 2 feet tall I'm going to be hitting my head on them all the time. To be honest, this seems like the Juicero of furniture: an expensive tech solution to a non-tech problem. The problem is solved for a fraction of the cost with a daybed that has storage underneath.[1] It is, after all, still a combination sleep/living area with storage room for clothes. As someone working on a furniture solution for small spaces and with a history of professional furniture building, turning furniture into built-in moving electronics is IMO not the solution: 1. It increases the cost of the furniture to be out of the range of your customers, who are typically in a small space because they do not have a ton of extra money. 2. Good luck getting your landlord to approve bolting large furniture to your ceiling, and what do you do when you move? [1] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70320135/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70320135/

teddyh 8y ago
Or a simple loft bed: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/bedroom/19039/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/be...
jonknee 8y ago
> Good luck getting your landlord to approve bolting large furniture to your ceiling, and what do you do when you move? The article sounds like this is a feature of the apartment (to help make up for small unit sizes).
- claudiulodro 8y ago
  In that case, good luck getting your landlord out to fix the bed if it gets stuck in the ceiling! :)
  - sharemywin 8y ago
    ... or your pinned against the wall and can't get out.

brink 8y ago

Will I be able to sleep in my bed during a power outage?

Cyphase 8y ago
Sure, if you can reach the mechanical release. I'd be more worried about DoS[0] attacks against the cloud service that prevent me from using the app to call down my bed and other furniture. Or someone hacking in and pulling my bed up with me in it. What a nightmare that would be. [0] Denial of Sleep

tomatotomato37 8y ago

I guess I'm not the only one who thought the next step for home furnishings was giving them the ability to break down at the worst possible time.

niftich 8y ago

Beds take up a lot of floor area, but lifting them off the floor with expensive machinery you must install in your ceiling is hardly a compelling solution. It's the prevalence of innerspring mattresses that's responsible for contemporary bedding being unwieldy. An innerspring mattress is constructed to predetermined form factor, and is resistant to folding or rolling or other mechanical ways of conserving space. Getting it out of the way means manipulating the entire unit as one, which absent a pulley system installed in your ceiling typically means rotating it onto a weak edge, where it can barely remain upright; this can be rectified by a platform that holds that the mattress in place while it is pivoted upright into a recess in the wall, in an established, if outdated design. If you forego monolithic innerspring mattresses, you have vastly more options in moving bedding when it's not needed.

fermienrico 8y ago
"you must install in your ceiling is hardly a compelling solution." - why? we have "expensive" machinery to open our garage doors. Why specifically do you think it is not a compelling solution? I personally think this is a great idea as ceilings are useless for the most part and that space can be used for something else - like storing the entire bed.
- cmontella 8y ago
  > ceilings are useless for the most part I would say they are underutilized. Ceilings are certainly useful for preventing rain from falling on our heads ;)
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    Those are roofs. Ceilings are basically just for looks.
    - cmontella 8y ago
      Ha touche. Although I would say my ceiling is just the inside part of my roof :P I guess it depends on how your house is made.

dwighttk 8y ago

This sounds great until you realize you have to put every non-robotic thing away into its tiny little container before you can do anything pertaining to changing the room around.

paul7986 8y ago

Could it not come crashing down upon you? "I wanted to sit on my couch, but it fell and nearly killed me... damn robot furniture."

adrianmonk 8y ago
It could, but it shouldn't if properly made. For one thing, it's got 4 straps. If any 3 straps or any two opposing corner straps are intact, then it should probably not fall down. So there's some redundancy. Aside from that, use a worm drive[1] between the motor and the pulleys. As long as the gearbox is intact, the weight of the furniture won't be able to turn the output gear. If you want more assurance than that, put some kind of extra brake or lock on the pulleys or drive shaft. Maybe a pawl[2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worm_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worm_drive [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawl

buboard 8y ago

Polymorphic homes maybe, but what's robotic about these? A robot would self-clean for example. this accomplishes the same and doesnt require any motors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juWaO5TJS00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juWaO5TJS00

pg_bot 8y ago

While this is an interesting curiosity, it is inferior to the Murphy bed. People move, and like to rearrange their furniture in their own places. The straps are unpleasant to look at, and likely have a higher failure rate due to their complexity. There is no way this will see mass adoption, if that's their goal I think they should do more customer research.

quizme2000 8y ago

I've watched this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI3Zo3Ax494 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI3Zo3Ax494 on "This Old House" years ago and it also stood out as really well designed, instead of a product looking for a problem to solve. The issue is always cost but this system seemed more on track with reality.

justifier 8y ago

i built something similar for a home project i ended up taking it down due to concern of having all of that weight above me when a huge mass is suspended above you the potential gravitational energy becomes very palapable

singularity2001 8y ago

who doesn't want to stand below a 200kg Alexa-controlled piece of furniture hanging from the ceiling. Alexa drop it!

Animats 8y ago

Nissan did build some robotic office chairs.[1] They rearrange themselves for meetings. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLEgvD7iG-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLEgvD7iG-M

nikkiofearth 8y ago
i wish. thats staged

FiatLuxDave 8y ago

This reminds me of a very cool apartment I visited many years ago. I used to party with some SCAD kids in Savannah. Two interior design majors I knew had gotten themselves a small apartment and a very tolerant landlord. The bedroom was amazing! The bed hung from the ceiling on strong cables, similar to the bed in the article, but the sleeping position was about 0.8 meters high rather than on the floor. In addition, the floor of the room was not flat, but made up of various levels of platforms. The lounge chair was up in one of the upper corners of the room, and you could watch the TV mounted at the same level over the heads of people occupying the floor space. They also had a stripper pole in the front room, which was great for parties. But it was the bedroom with the hanging bed which really impressed me.