Whether or not you consider yourself to be an expert in interior design or art, there’s a good chance you might have heard of the Herman Miller name, a name synonymous with one of the more iconic pieces of office furniture in the form of the Aeron office chair. Now it looks like the company wants to kick things up a notch by making its furniture “smarter”.
To that end, the company has announced that they will begin selling sensors that can be attached to various furnitures and collect anonymized data with regards to usage. For example these sensors can be used to tell which areas are used the most, which could help with certain decisions.
Herman Miller will also be creating a sensor designed for sit-to-stand desks in which it will be able to track how often its user changes position. Given that there have been articles claiming that sitting too long is detrimental to health, it could provide a way for users to keep track of their sitting and standing times, maybe even set goals via an accompanying app, or reminders if they’ve been sitting for too long.
Interestingly enough it seems that Herman Miller’s solution is not a one-off solution. The sensors are said to cost around $100 each and the software that goes with it will cost $36 per desk per year. This is because the system will run independently from the client’s IT network for apparent security reasons. Based on this it sounds like Herman Miller’s target market is more towards the enterprise rather than for users at home.
Filed in . Read more about Connected Objects, Health and IoT (Internet of Things).