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Bumblebee wants to lift your bed to the ceiling to save you space

AJ Dellinger
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Screengrab via GeekWire/YouTube

If there is one thing your apartment never has enough of, it’s space. It’s easy to fill up just about every last inch of square footage in your place — with knick-knacks, with necessities, and especially with furniture. Imagine if you could just make your bed disappear when you aren’t using it so you suddenly have an empty room to host people or to do a workout in. Bumblebee Spaces has found a way to do just that, and it’s showing off the system in a small Seattle apartment.

Walk into the small, one bedroom apartment overlooking the waterfront and you might feel cramped. But wait for the Bumblebee Spaces smart home system to kick in and you’ll see the bed and furniture retract up into the ceiling. By the time the electric motor system pulls the bed all the way up by the industrial-grade straps, you’ll find that the seemingly small apartment has just about all the room you could ask for. We’ve seen plenty of space-saving tech before, especially in tiny homes, but nothing quite like this.

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Bumblebee’s system might seem like a pretty simple bit of machinery, but it’s much more than just a modern reimagining of a Murphy bed. It’s all connected to an iPad that serves as a central control panel for the system, which utilizes a variety of smart tech to help optimize your home.

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The system is packed with depth sensors that can determine if there are people nearby or in range of the moving furniture. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning algorithms help determine what items have been added or removed to retractable storage spaces and bring them down to you when you need them, according to a report from GeekWire.

One of the smartest parts of Bumblebee’s space-saving smart home system: it doesn’t rely on an internet connection to function. That means that even if your Wi-Fi goes out, you won’t be stuck with your bed tucked neatly against the ceiling while you’re forced to sleep on the floor.

If you want Bumblebee in your own home, well, you’re going to have to wait. The company is still working on building a consumer-ready product and prices are yet to be determined. You can get your hands on the system by renting out the Seattle apartment currently conducting demonstrations of Bumblebee’s tech, though. And the apartment is set to go on the market soon with the system installed, according to GeekWire.

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AJ Dellinger
AJ Dellinger
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AJ Dellinger is a freelance reporter from Madison, Wisconsin with an affinity for all things tech. He has been published by…
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