We have all been there; moving to a new place or buying new furniture, and then dealing with the hassle of assembling flat-packed furniture. This is such a pressing problem in first-world countries that Skylar Tibbits and his team at the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT has spent years and millions of dollars solving the problem. And here it is, the first self-assembling chair.
The self-assembling chair here is made up of six pieces, which are placed in a water tank and agitated until they magnetically snap together. Unique connection points on each of the pieces mean that it is impossible for it to fit together incorrectly. Student Baily Zuniga told Wired magazine: “At close proximity, each piece should easily connect with its corresponding component but never with another one. “Finding a way to make the pieces more interchangeable would increase the probability of the pieces finding their matches, thus resulting in a faster assembly.” The researchers said the technology could one day have applications in underwater infrastructure repair.
The process took around seven hours to complete, but the team believes the process could be speeded up. And no, you can’t sit on one yet, because the prototype only 15cm big. But the next step is to build a human-sized one, and eventually scale the project up to assemble hundreds at the same time.
Move over, Ikea.
Fluid Assembly Furniture from Self-Assembly Lab, MIT on Vimeo.
Source: Wired
