If you've ever lived in a big city like San Francisco or New York, there's a good chance you may have picked a fairly small, but affordable apartment to start with. If so, you likely know the importance of saving space in crowded living areas.
Small or otherwise economical furniture (such as a fold-up bed or futon) is almost a necessity to prevent tinier apartments from feeling overcrowded. Ikea understands this dilemma and wants to help out moving forward.
To do so, the company today announced its "Rognan" line of "robotic" furniture, which is being developed in collaboration with Ori; a fellow furniture company hailing from America.
The primary goal for the Rognan line is to provide customers with "innovative" and "flexible" furniture that can adapt to their needs. For example, one of Ikea's Rognan products is essentially a full bedroom/couch hybrid -- on one side, there's a slide-out bed, a closet, and a few other storage areas, and on the other side there's a couch.
By pressing built-in mode buttons, users can cause the furniture to automatically slide left or right to create more space for their needs. Hit the closet button to free up a small amount of room for getting dressed, or hit the bedroom button to have your bed automatically slide out.
When you wake up in the morning and want to sit down for some TV or gaming, hit the couch button and watch as the bedroom section presses against the wall, giving you space to relax. You can see a shorter video demonstration of this furniture above, but for a longer clip, you'll need to visit Ikea's official announcement page.
If you're eager to test out the company's new furniture, you may be in for a bit of a wait. Though seemingly not confirmed within Ikea's announcement, The Verge claims the Rognan line will first launch in Hong Kong and Japan in 2020; there's no word on when it might arrive for other countries or regions.
https://www.techspot.com/news/80368-ikea-announces-rognan-shape-shifting-robotic-furniture-set.html
