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Watch Nissan’s New Self-Driving Office Chair in Action

By
Hilary Brueck
Hilary Brueck
By
Hilary Brueck
Hilary Brueck
February 17, 2016, 11:20 AM ET
Nissan "Intelligent Parking Chair"
YOKOHAMA, Japan (Feb. 16, 2016) Ð Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. has announced the first "Intelligent Parking Chair," a concept inspired by its intelligent park assist technology that allows drivers to easily park their vehicles using automatic steering.Nissan © 2016 Nissan

Never push your chair in again. That’s the promise of a new robotic “self-driving” chair from Nissan.

The seat that parks itself works a little like clap-on-clap-off lights: Clap once, and an entire roomful of office chairs usher themselves back into their spots, Marie Kondo-neatfreak-style.

The chairs are rigged up to a bird’s-eye office camera system via Wi-Fi. Four cameras keep track of each chair’s position and help steer the chairs back into place with all the precision of a Japanese tea service. Nissan powers the driving, while Japanese chair company Okamura provides the seat:

But you’re probably not going to be able to buy these wonder chairs for your own office anytime soon. (Which is probably for the best, since it’s unclear what clap-powered chairs would do if the whole office ever burst into applause.)

The concept chairs were designed to show off Nissan’s “Intelligent Parking Assist” technology. It’s a camera-based car system that can steer a vehicle into a parking spot hands-free, while the driver applies the brakes and the gas.

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Intelligent parking assist is a first in what Nissan reports will be a fleet of self-driving technologies for consumer vehicles: The company tells Fortune it will be adding more autonomous features to ten vehicle models over the next four years. Nissan also expects to make a fully self-driving car by 2020, something the company is testing out on the roads in California now.

Until then, at least the chairs know how to drive.

About the Author
By Hilary Brueck
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