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Comment by dirtyid | Hacker News Reader

This has been floating around design blogs for years, I wonder if over supply of tiny condos + covid is finally going popularize the design. Wonder what safety features there are to prevent people from getting crushed/trapped.

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Says in the video, 20lbs of force is sufficient to trip it.

I wouldn't worry about it crushing one of my cats but I would close it and then hear a plaintive "meow" from wherever it was sleeping inside :D.

I didn't even think about cats, I think I'd be irrationally paranoid at the sensors failing if I had small pets around. I'd want a gap at floor level as backup, maybe an aesthetically integrated cat flap. But I've owned remarkably stupid cats before who weren't very environmentally aware. Certainly taught me to close doors carefully and quietly.

I've shut mine in cupboards a couple of times where they've leapt in while I was looking the other way.

The best description of cats is furry toddlers than ever grow up.

This one has at least been delivered enough times to justify creating a "What to expect during installation" video for new buyers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d17RyUAjzNs. I don't know whether that's 2, 20, or 200 units, though.

Yeah I’ve seen pictures of similar things to this years ago. I seem to recall that the pictures I saw were from Japan. Is there a name for this type of construction? I tried to Google compact apartment and transform room but couldn’t find anything at a glance so I must be using the wrong terms.

It also reminds me a bit of storage lockers on rails that some libraries use, like this: https://www.southwestsolutions.com/ssg/moving-shelves-on-tra...

Iterations of this design show up in intro architecture design studios every year, Shortly after Italian smart furniture videos appeared on Youtube. I've seen many based off library rolling shelving as well, most older than aforementioned designs. Pretty natural conceptions for architecture student + student living + spending time in library + furniture design (easy to tackle small scale project). Of course after graduation, most of these ideas get dropped because (I guess) market conditions were never particularly fertile for these designs to take off. Even now with vanlife, micro living, I rarely see smart furniture like this in real life. Still extremely niche. I wonder if there's a term for multiple discovery / simultaneous invention for design ideas that gets spontaneously rediscovered due to very specific conception conditions but never material on mainstreet. Something sisyphean about it all.

The video shows a safety feature which stops the motion if it bumps into something. Looks like it's just simple detection of excessive resistance to the drive motor. Maybe be careful if you have any small pets?

But can you easily differentiate between something which is pushed by the wall and something heavy that is on the shelf ?

Also granted you can, my instinctive reaction, the instinctive reaction is IMO try to get out, not push against the wall.

Seems to me it's not such a simple problem to solve unless you are ok with (i) some level of discomfort (ii) getting pets stuck inside and traumatised for life (granted the device does stop it's movement before crushing it).

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