Living spaces are getting smaller, but it seems residents still have the same amount of belongings to store. That's where robotic furniture comes in, a system that's changing the way one can live in their home.

Candace Jackson profiles a number of companies offering new robotic furniture systems for The New York Times. For example, Bumblebee Spaces can create space in a small room in a unique way.

Sankarshan Murthy, a former Tesla and Apple Watch engineer, wants to put everything on the ceiling. “Architects don’t even look at it as an opportunity to put any living experience there,” he said. “We can open that up.” His start-up, Bumblebee Spaces, makes a robotic “A.I. butler” furniture system that deploys down from overhead by tapping a control pad or by voice command.

He and his engineers had set up a model room, a cube-like space with green screen walls. A queen-size Tuft & Needle mattress was suspended from the ceiling by four white seatbelt-like hoists. Mr. Murthy pulled out an iPad and showed Jackson how to move it up and down. The bed moved fairly slowly, lights blinking around it as it rose and dropped. The white storage boxes dropped down more rapidly. The whole thing had the feel of a futuristic garage, with tracks, sleek white hoists and sensors that would pause the system if anyone ran underneath.

Continue reading to learn more about robotic furniture.

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