Since the water bed fell out of fashion and infomercials for "smart" mattresses stopped running, it has seemed like the furniture world has swung more towards design and less towards technology. With the Massachusetts Institute of Technology now experimenting in the industry, the balance could be restored to its former glory.
Though not yet ready to be used in functioning furniture, MIT's new invention, Transform, could one day lead to tables, chairs, and more that change shape depending on need, Fastcodedesign.com reported. The current version of Transform is a table that changes form based on how people interact with it. It also can make specific shapes or even create particular formations and operate at such a pace to establish a mood. On top is a series of thousands of white squares; below is a motor enabling their movement.
"TRANSFORM fuses technology and design to celebrate its transformation from a piece of still furniture to a dynamic machine driven by the stream of data and energy," according to the technology's general description.
Transform represents the evolution of a similar project, inFORM, which enabled users to reach through (or under) computer monitor while a series of squares in another location would correlate their movements. Thus, two people thousands of miles away linked with inFORM could shake hands in a way that would mimic their actual grip.
Though inFORM was an incredible accomplishment, its inventors felt it lacked proper foresight. In the future they imagined, there'd be less computer monitors but more computers. Thus, their technology had to be more adaptable.
"When most people look at inFORM, what they see is a big computer interface," Daniel Leithinger, Transform's creator, told Fast Co.. "And that's even how we thought of it. But in the future, computers aren't going to look like computers. They're going to be embedded in everything around us."
