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Chair changes colour if you're fat

glowing furniture

Pressure sensors in this interactive furniture detect how heavy you are then 'tell' the chair to change colour accordingly (Image: fuwa pica)

The ancient Japanese believed that gods lived in all things, whether animate or inanimate. Talking to a wall was not an idle act, but actually a kind of soul-searching. And usually, the wall talked back.

Now the designer of a table and set of chairs says his furniture embodies that philosophy.

The furniture is called fuwa pica, which loosely translated means 'soft and flashy'. It senses people's presence, then gradually changes colour accordingly.

The interactive set, which could be in shops, airports, museums, or bars within a year or two, uses technology to extend people's emotional state into a room that may be devoid of ancient ideas.

"We want modern people like us to remember that there was an interaction between people and furniture," says Ichi Kanaya, assistant professor at Osaka University.

In a typical scenario, a person might walk into a room furnished with fuwa pica. He or she might place a memento or favorite item, let's say a blue vase, on the table and sit on one of the chairs. Gradually the chairs begin to change from white to blue.

Air-cushioned chairs

Kanaya and his team, working out of the university's Mongoose Studio, designed a round table that has a computer and built-in LCD display and four air-cushioned chairs.

The table and chairs are linked to each other via a wireless signal. Colour sensors in the table scan objects placed on top to determine their hue and then the computer sends a signal to the chair to match the colour of the object.

The brightness is controlled by pressure sensors inside the chair. These measure the air pressure and send that information to the table's computer. The higher the pressure, the brighter the colour.

"It's a wonderful demonstration of integrating high-tech into lifestyle experiences," says Jonathan Cagan, professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and co-author of The Design of Things to Come.

"It focuses on the pleasure that people receive from the interaction, not on the technology."

Groaning under the weight

Chair colour is not only dictated by objects placed on the table. A casual sitter will also elicit a response from the 'chair gods'.


The thing Kanaya and his team need to be sure of, says Cagan, is that the furniture behaves consistently and seamlessly and that the technology is robust. You don't want to have to reboot your chair.

"As soon as it fails, the experience of the chair fails," says Cagan.

Whether embedded with technology or not, all furniture is breathing and talking, say the researchers.

If you cannot hear it, ancient Japanese philosophy might suggest you need to inspect the silence inside yourself.

Tags: computers-and-technology, information-technology