There’s a fine line between making our lives easier and making us lazy, and as of late, technology is really toeing that line. The most recent example comes from the folks at Nissan, who have unveiled a self-parking office chair because apparently, it’s now too difficult to push your own seat in when you get up. Seriously, it’s like we’re celebrating slovenliness.
The chair, which was inspired by the slightly more useful self-parking car technology, is able to make 360-degree turns, zero in on a target location, and then literally put itself away. It’s a bit reminiscent of “Night at the Museum,” only instead of formerly animate animals coming to life, this is an inanimate chair moving around of its own accord.
Named the “Intelligent Parking Chair,” these high-tech pieces of office furniture may look a little bulky, but that’s mostly because being sleek and letting you be a slob don’t exactly go hand in hand. According to Nissan, these chairs were manufactured by taking Okamura chairs and tracking them with four motion cameras stationed at various strategic angles within a room. These Wi-Fi-controlled cameras are then able to transmit information to the chairs — or as the car company puts it, “generate a bird’s-eye view to wirelessly transmit the chair’s position and its route to destination.”
Then, when you clap, the chair takes this information and acts upon it, sliding back into its original position as though you and your colleagues were never there.
“By day, these chairs are inanimate objects,” Nissan boasts. “By night, they park!”
