Nissan develops Autonomous Office Chairs!

So, if the walk from your desk to the coffee machine seems to be way too labourious, then here is the next best thing for you - the Autonomous Office Chair. Well, at least, that is, according to Nissan.

Forget about autonomous mobility on demand (AMOD) in the urban setting. Now you can get it in the office. Nissan is claiming to have developed the very first “Intelligent Parking Chair” in a new concept video. Jut clap your hands and the chair neatly tucks back under the desk it came from, and of course we all will be rushing out to buy one of these, wont we?

The chair has a small motor and ‘brain’ that is capable of moving it around 360 degrees to a pre-determined destination. To arrive safely, the chair is guided by four cameras placed on the ceiling of the room to get a bird's eye view of the room and the chair's location. This information is then beamed wirelessly to the chair which then navigates back from whence it came.

“With this innovation in office technology, Japanese businessmen are now freed from the troublesome task of arranging chairs,” Nissan said in a recent press release. We're sure that the company spokesperson had his tongue firmly implanted in his cheek at the time. More certainly, the video is simply intended to plug Nissan’s park assist technology in a creative way. Some Nissan vehicles around the world offer automatic steering to help manoeuvre them into parking spaces.

We're sure that we'll not be seeing the chairs in any office anytime soon, but it sure is a neat little marketing trick.