The MIT Media Lab, an interdisciplinary research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently teamed up with Yves Béhar to design a smart furniture system for micro apartments, which can transform the space into a living room or bedroom by simply pushing a button.

A large number of people do not have the luxury of owning a sizable house or apartment. This compels people to use the space they have in a selective manner - for instance - they might have to give up the idea of a king or queen-sized bed and forsake their huge lounge sofa for probably a more compressed 3-seater sofa.

However, this may be about to change thanks to the folks at MIT Media Labs that created a spin-off company dubbed, Ori and teamed up with designer Yves Behar to come up with a robotic apartment that can change and adapt according to people's needs.

The Ori system operates a compact module that combines a bed and a closet on one side, and an entertainment suite and a home office on the other, DeZeen Magazine reported.

Space can expanded on either side by simply shifting the full-height unit forward and backwards. Depending on their requirement, users can slide a bed from underneath the storage or a bench from below the TV.

Béhar and his San Francisco-based studio, Fuseproject teamed up to come up with a single furniture unit that could convert to make good use of small spaces. The final design can be requested in an array of materials, colors and finishes.

The system is exclusively designed for micro apartments that encompass less than 300 square feet i.e. 28 square meters of space, in the wake of living spaces becoming more compact and rent in cities continuing to rise.

In order to demonstrate this challenge, an illustrator created an extremely small wooden bedroom for himself and his friend's living room in a bid to do away with paying the high rents of San Francisco.

Béhar explained their goal was to figure out a single unit that would boost the value of one bedroom apartment or a micro studio.

A pyramid-shaped control panel that boast buttons for modifying lighting and layout can be found on the side of the furniture module. To move the unit forward and backward, user just needs to touch its vertical edge. Presets for storage, lounge or bathroom can be activated via icons along the bottom of the control panel.

This basically means whether you need space for work or space to sleep, it will be there ready for you; and the good news is that all this can be achieved without wasting any space, UberGizmo reported.

But that's not all. Users can adjust the settings with the help of a smartphone app as well to ensure the room is set up in their favorite layout when they get home.

Developers are slated to fuse Ori systems into homes in Washington DC, Seattle and Boston starting this summer.

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Tags Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Technology