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MIT's Ori Robotic Modular Furniture Is Designed To Make Small Places Feel More Roomy (archpaper.com)
An anonymous reader writes: MIT's Media Lab has produced Ori, a range of robotic, modular furniture designed to make small places feel more roomy. The Architect's Newspaper reports: "With its name coming from the Japanese word 'origami,' the furniture system combines robotics, architecture, and design to let interiors double-up as bedrooms, living rooms, dining rooms, and offices. Teaming up with Swiss product designer Yves Behar, founder and CEO of Ori and research scientist at MIT Hasier Larrea has his eyes set on fundamentally altering the 'experience and economics of the urban built environment.' Speaking in a press release, Larrea added that 'Ori's systems make possible the effortless and magical transformation of interior spaces, providing the totally new experience of having our interior space intelligently conform to our activities, rather than our activities being forced to conform to our interior space.' A movable mainframe, containing a variety of concealable furniture and storage, is the core concept in Ori's modular and mechatronic furniture. Using the wall mounted control panel, the module can move across the floor and deploy different pieces of furniture. This can all be done remotely through the Ori app as well." Ori is not on the market yet, but inquiries can be made via Ori's website.
This has been done in Japan for years. But MIT did say robot instead of machine or mechanism so TECH NEWS!
Sorry I literally lost it at the girl lying in a bed that is essentially a dresser drawer.
Seinfeld reference, anyone?
Japanese guys sleeping in drawers
So, my couch can fetch me a beer without me ever leaving it?
Table-ized A.I.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the word Origami comes from Ori, meaning folding, and kami, meaning paper? So...they mean to say it folds?
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
IKEA.. It's a whole now concept in flat pack furniture. Frustration free, Now it assembles itself.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Useful and cool, but hardly "robotic."
A mainframe? Mechanical furniture? Moving parts? An app? What could possibly go wrong?
Hallowed are the Ori.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
a roommate thinks it's funny to decide for you that you are done sleeping and roll up the bed--with you still in it...
with a Murphy bed
A Murphy Bed folds up vertically, and I have seen some with built in tables on the underside of the bed. So instead of waiting 5 minutes for your wall to move over, you just close the draw bridge like door that is the bed, viola.
So that I can battle cyber threats! The cyber wars are here and all I have is this lousy iPhone. Luckily, a cyber warrior like me "knows some people" who can get me a high end cyber battle machine. Does anyone have any recommendations? I'm looking for something to use in daily cyber battles and the occasional "cyber encounter" with some cyber sluts.
Several years ago, I saw some film on a new housing technique. In a space not much larger than a shipping container, the designer hung several thick wall segments from the ceiling. With a segment in the center, the kitchen was to the left and a dining area to the right. When finished with the kitchen, two wall segments were moved to the left, hiding both kitchen and dining room and opened up another room. By the window, the only window, at the far end, a Murphy bed in the wall. And when it was up, another wall segment was moved over and a living room appeared.
It seemed to be a wonderful use of space, but for only one. The bathroom seemed not convenient.
There is a wonderful book: A Programming Language. Not about computers, but about life. You should be able to touch the eaves of the house. Bedrooms are a waste of space, sleeping nooks in the rooms are better.
Monticello has sleeping nooks in the rooms with fireplaces.
"Using the wall mounted control panel, the module can move across the floor and deploy different pieces of furniture. This can all be done remotely through the Ori app as well."
Given a demonstration about what might go wrong with current home automation in eps2.0_unm4sk-pt?.tc, I shudder to think what could happen if furniture was controllable through an "app"...
Can't use the desk, while someone else crashes on the bed.
Does this system assume that my living space is clutter-free? Seems like an over-simplified view of life, sort of like what all of those home-decorating magazines depict.
I bet one of these fully load weighs, quite literally, a ton. Would love to see how it tears up the thin floorboard veneers in a lot of modern apartments.
I reviewed site and the videos. It's a thick bookshelf/cabinets that electronically move forwards and backwards so the 'bedroom' or 'living room' has more space when you're in that room. The bookshelf is extra thick because the bottom has a pull-out bed. The other side has a TV shelf above the internal bed protrusion and a different model has that as a couch instead. There is nothing modular about it. It has no modules, everything is connected, it's all one item with no options for different configurations. Well, you can buy different versions that have different shelf layouts, but you can't reconfigure them. Separate versions != Modular.
Their use of 'robotic' means it moves forward and backward while you hold down a touch sensitive 'button' and walk with it since it's moving. It's like calling a screen door robotic because it slowly closes itself. In fact, I think this setup would be more useful if it wasn't 'robotic' It moves so slowly and you have to keep your finger on moving button. It would be far easier if you could just manually push the thing or slide the bed back in.
And don't forget: Cloud. Yes! There's an app* that lets you move your dresser forwards and backwards from anywhere in the world! Your plane got delayed and you won't make it home tonight? Make sure you don't leave your bed out! Hopefully you remembered to tuck in your sheets and store your pillows and blankets in some of the available cabinet space else you'll likely jam the bed.
Perhaps best is the power cord for the whole thing. You can see what looks like a long metal frame with a cord along the wall for around 2 seconds in one of their videos. In every other piece of media, the device is fully disconnected from everything and it's up against a sold wall with no outlets behind it (it moves so you can see the whole wall). This must be the magic they talk about. An electronic device with built-in outlets (excuse me, "on-device" outlets) for your TV and laptop that aren't connected to any power sources. Thinking about it, I think that's a track it moves along instead of using powered wheels.
The only thing new about this is it runs alone an electric track instead of being manually pushed. Oh wait, some cabinets for handicap people also do that. So the only new thing they're bring is advertising this as a space saving device. Wait, no. High-density mobile shelving is already something you can buy today. So they're bring nothing new to the table expect slightly more targeted marketing.
"Running on modular and scalable mechatronics," Modular meaning fixed. Scalable meaning you can move it back 1 foot or 3 feet. Mechatronics meaning automatic wheels or a straight track. Fuck all companies that promote their products like this. Especially when they claim they're new and innovative when all they're copycats of existing products. Well, these are college kids so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they were too ignorant to research available products before designing their own.
*In theory once someone gives them money to actually make the product instead of their fake videos and single page website. And they rewrite the URLs of the images so despite it looking like you're going to visit the actual image, you get another DIY bullshit image viewer.
Can you tell I had a bad day today? But everything in my post is factual.
And memory plastic furniture.
Nothing else happened in that video. A wall slides back and forth. Not a terrible concept for a small apartment but not sure why it's exciting.
They added a motor and buttons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB2-2j9e4co
It's great until your bed suffocates you or your fridge freezes you almost to death.
As a side note, it never ceases to amaze me how stupid ads look (maybe I don't watch enough of them to stop noticing such things). The girl wakes up in her bed with full make up, her hair is done, fake eyelashes, etc. Everything is sterile and perfectly clean and wrinkle free. Who lives like that?
You can't handle the truth.
I'm okay with the risks of home automation considering what happened to that actor's character in S01E06...
I do find it interesting that despite the name they chose for their product, no part of it seems to fold. Lots of sliding/drawers, but no folding.
that that is is that that is not is not
I would take a cheaper mechanical version of something like that. We as a society are going to have to learn to do more with a whole lot less. I applaud the people fighting the trend to have larger and larger living spaces that many people cannot easily afford financially and our society cannot afford from an environmental standpoint.
This looks like it could be in an Ikea catalogue !
Oh I hope so much that someone would make a horror film where people are being crushed by these.
Looks like a bad copy of a Hongkong appartment, except now with motors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBs0u8TY6jk
"Hallowed be the Ori."
Looking through the comments above, 90% of them are people trash talking anything they possibly can about this. Yes, I get that it's not the absolutest most perfectest thing ever (what is?), but we could maybe discuss it without the "it's completely worthless, never usable by anybody, why did anybody ever waste part of their life thinking about this" rhetoric.
Or maybe we couldn't. This is hardly the first article I've seen this on; it's like Slashdot has lost the ability to do anything but complain these days. (Even this post is just meta-moaning rather than anything constructive.)
I would've expected something a little more aesthetically pleasing. This is the dullest-looking stuff I've seen in a long time. Yuck. Part of the worlds' problems stem from the lack of such in peoples' lives. This looks like a dystopian futurists' dream.
Hallowed are the Ori.
Great. The bed isn't there when I'm not sleeping in it. Novel. What about the other person sleeping in it? Shared resources are just great, when you're sharing them with yourself. Take the same 200 squeet, and get triple-usage of bed and office and living room, sounds wonderful. Now what about the triple storage of my linens, my equipment, and my glassware?
It's like someone thinks the planet is full. Let me introduce you to my little friends: saskatchewan, vermont, manitoba, montana. You aren't being forced to live stacked 100 apartments high. Try exploring the horizontal, and spread the fk out.