This is an interesting idea if you have high ceilings. In my experience, a room small enough to make this system worth using would also have low ceilings. My ceilings are 8 ft, so unless the proposed bed and ceiling boxes are less than 2 feet tall I'm going to be hitting my head on them all the time.
To be honest, this seems like the Juicero of furniture: an expensive tech solution to a non-tech problem. The problem is solved for a fraction of the cost with a daybed that has storage underneath.[1] It is, after all, still a combination sleep/living area with storage room for clothes.
As someone working on a furniture solution for small spaces and with a history of professional furniture building, turning furniture into built-in moving electronics is IMO not the solution:
1. It increases the cost of the furniture to be out of the range of your customers, who are typically in a small space because they do not have a ton of extra money.
2. Good luck getting your landlord to approve bolting large furniture to your ceiling, and what do you do when you move?
Luxury apartment buildings typically have pretty good maintenance capabilities. You already rely on them to be able and cook, go to the restroom, take a shower, etc.
Why is that? Luxury doesn't equal size, especially in a dense urban area. Did you read the article? What else do you call a small, expensive apartment with tons of amenities that also contains robotic furniture?
"Inventor William Lawrence Murphy (1856-1957) began tinkering with hideaway beds while living in a one-room apartment in San Francisco in the late 19th century. He was falling for a young opera singer and courting customs at that time would not permit a lady to enter a gentleman’s bedroom. But according to family legend, Murphy’s limited finances and a strict moral code didn’t spoil his chance at love. His invention allowed him to stow his bed in his closet, transforming his one-room apartment from a bedroom into a parlor.
On the other hand, consider the fate of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr. , who survived his own inventions of CFCs and leaded gasoline (leading to lead poisoning), only to succumb to his invention of furniture:
> In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted poliomyelitis, which left him severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to help others lift him from bed. In 1944, he was entangled in the device and died of strangulation.[15][16][17]
Beds take up a lot of floor area, but lifting them off the floor with expensive machinery you must install in your ceiling is hardly a compelling solution.
It's the prevalence of innerspring mattresses that's responsible for contemporary bedding being unwieldy. An innerspring mattress is constructed to predetermined form factor, and is resistant to folding or rolling or other mechanical ways of conserving space. Getting it out of the way means manipulating the entire unit as one, which absent a pulley system installed in your ceiling typically means rotating it onto a weak edge, where it can barely remain upright; this can be rectified by a platform that holds that the mattress in place while it is pivoted upright into a recess in the wall, in an established, if outdated design.
If you forego monolithic innerspring mattresses, you have vastly more options in moving bedding when it's not needed.
What do you propose? Foam-based mattresses are becoming more and more prevalent. While they can be folded more easily (and without damage) when compared to innerspring mattresses, I can't imagine why you'd want to do that on a regular basis.
The only real alternatives I can think of are camping-oriented bed-rolls and hammocks. While they can be comfortable, they're clearly compromises: given the option, long term, most would choose a bed.
Humans lay flat to sleep. It's ideal to have a dedicated sleeping space. Hence, beds and bed rooms.
Make sure you're not trying to use foldable beds to solve problems of being unwilling to build your buildings higher
to provide sufficient space for bedrooms, or if you're already looking at a high-rise area, sufficiently speedy public transport to allow people to come in from areas that have the space.
"you must install in your ceiling is hardly a compelling solution." - why? we have "expensive" machinery to open our garage doors. Why specifically do you think it is not a compelling solution?
I personally think this is a great idea as ceilings are useless for the most part and that space can be used for something else - like storing the entire bed.
You can also put insulation on top of them to make your room more temperature efficient. Also prevents the need of dusting your roof joists, since they are effectively sealed.
I've watched this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI3Zo3Ax494 on "This Old House" years ago and it also stood out as really well designed, instead of a product looking for a problem to solve. The issue is always cost but this system seemed more on track with reality.
This meme seems to crop up every couple years, but AFAIK there is no affordable way to obtain such products.
Haven't found anyone who actually sells beds that retract into the ceiling. https://resourcefurniture.com/ sells nicely designed but crushingly expensive murphy bed type things.
Anyone know where I can get a retractable bed set up for less than a thousand?
This reminds me of a very cool apartment I visited many years ago. I used to party with some SCAD kids in Savannah. Two interior design majors I knew had gotten themselves a small apartment and a very tolerant landlord. The bedroom was amazing! The bed hung from the ceiling on strong cables, similar to the bed in the article, but the sleeping position was about 0.8 meters high rather than on the floor. In addition, the floor of the room was not flat, but made up of various levels of platforms. The lounge chair was up in one of the upper corners of the room, and you could watch the TV mounted at the same level over the heads of people occupying the floor space.
They also had a stripper pole in the front room, which was great for parties. But it was the bedroom with the hanging bed which really impressed me.
I'd be more worried about DoS[0] attacks against the cloud service that prevent me from using the app to call down my bed and other furniture. Or someone hacking in and pulling my bed up with me in it. What a nightmare that would be.
While this is an interesting curiosity, it is inferior to the Murphy bed. People move, and like to rearrange their furniture in their own places. The straps are unpleasant to look at, and likely have a higher failure rate due to their complexity.
There is no way this will see mass adoption, if that's their goal I think they should do more customer research.
This sounds great until you realize you have to put every non-robotic thing away into its tiny little container before you can do anything pertaining to changing the room around.
For one thing, it's got 4 straps. If any 3 straps or any two opposing corner straps are intact, then it should probably not fall down. So there's some redundancy.
Aside from that, use a worm drive[1] between the motor and the pulleys. As long as the gearbox is intact, the weight of the furniture won't be able to turn the output gear.
If you want more assurance than that, put some kind of extra brake or lock on the pulleys or drive shaft. Maybe a pawl[2].
To be honest, this seems like the Juicero of furniture: an expensive tech solution to a non-tech problem. The problem is solved for a fraction of the cost with a daybed that has storage underneath.[1] It is, after all, still a combination sleep/living area with storage room for clothes.
As someone working on a furniture solution for small spaces and with a history of professional furniture building, turning furniture into built-in moving electronics is IMO not the solution:
1. It increases the cost of the furniture to be out of the range of your customers, who are typically in a small space because they do not have a ton of extra money.
2. Good luck getting your landlord to approve bolting large furniture to your ceiling, and what do you do when you move?
[1] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70320135/