The Motorized Modular Furniture Meant For Micro-Units

• July 15, 2016

by Nena Perry-Brown

Two years ago, UrbanTurf covered a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) initiative that sought to combine robotics with the burgeoning micro-living phenomenon. Now with Ori, the future of smart furniture has arrived.

Ori intends to deliver mechanized, modular units to the market which will reconfigure themselves to serve various functions within a small living space. That’s Ori as in “origami”, the intricate Japanese art of creatively folding paper into three-dimensional objects.

The company’s founder, Hasier Larrea, led the MIT Media Lab’s Architectural Robotics research division for four years and has teamed up with furniture designer Yves Béhar to transform the technological concepts into viable products.

So how will Ori furniture work? There will be beds that can retract into, among other things, living rooms or offices —all with built-in storage systems. The units that house the beds can glide to and fro to ensure that the space is used efficiently. Most Ori furniture is controlled by a thermostat-like buttons that control the functionality and speed of the furniture’s conversions. The video below demonstrates:

The Ori systems are expected to be ready for the market in early 2017 and are being promoted both to individual consumers and developers.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/ori_bringing_motorized_modular_furniture_to_the_mass_market/11471