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You'd better sit down for Nissan's latest creation

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The ProPILOT Chair is inspired by Nissan's technology for automatically maintaining a set distance between a driver's car and the vehicle in front
Nissan
The ProPILOT Chair is inspired by Nissan's technology for automatically maintaining a set distance between a driver's car and the vehicle in front
Nissan
The ProPilot chair is able to detect when a preceding chair moves forward in the queue and follow it at a constant distance
Nissan
Similar to the ProPILOT systems installed in cars, the chair has a sensor to detect and monitor preceding chairs
Nissan
The chair is propelled by motorized wheels installed in its base
Nissan
The ProPILOT Chair is due to roll-out at selected restaurants in Japan next year
Nissan
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When it's not busy making cars, Nissan spends its time ruminating on highfalutin concepts like connected driving and the fuel station of the future. Thankfully, it's taken a break from these pipe dreams to work on something altogether more worthwhile for humanity: A self-driving queue-busting chair.

The ProPILOT Chair follows on from Nissan's previous revolutionary idea of self-parking chairs. The Intelligent Parking Chair, of course, is able to make offices run more efficiently by cutting out all that wasted time required for workers to push in their chairs after meetings.

As with the Intelligent Parking Chair, the ProPILOT Chair is inspired by one of the firm's other projects. ProPILOT is a so-called "autonomous driving" technology designed to automatically maintain a set distance between a driver's car and the vehicle in front.

The aim of the chair is to take over the task of queueing - for example at a restaurant or hairdresser - so that people can get off their feet, because if there's one thing the modern person needs it's the opportunity to sit more. Plus, taking the potential for human error out of the queueing process may help to eliminate, or at least minimize, the rampant incidence of queueing accidents around the world.

The ProPILOT Chair is due to roll-out at selected restaurants in Japan next year
Nissan

To achieve this, Nissan has installed motorized wheels and a camera into the ProPILOT Chair. The camera is used to monitor the preceding chair in a queue. When the person at the front of a queue leaves their chair, it senses their departure and repositions itself at the back of the queue.

The second chair in the queue is able to detect the newly vacated space and move into it, while each subsequent chair will move forward, in turn maintaining a consistent distance between itself and the chair in front. Ultimately, queuers are delivered to their destination safely and refreshed.

The ProPILOT Chair is being tested between now and the end of December, before a scheduled roll-out at selected restaurants in Japan next year.

The video below shows the chair in action.

Source: Nissan

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10 comments
Encycle
I'd love to see this evolve to sitting in a chair in the gate area, and at the right time, the chair boards the plane and one massive flight hassle goes away. Carry on goes behind your own feet, every seat including front row has a place to stow a bag. Give seats great lumber support and lose the recline.
Bob Flint
This has got to be one of the stupidest ideas, too bad Nissan, in a queue that may work, but stand in line like everyone else. If more people are waiting than seats available, not to mention the room, & energy required to move empty seats around, plus many people have bags, and other items sitting at their feet. Also if you are waiting in a hospital for hours and need to get up from time to time ie; bathroom break, once you come back you are shuffled or lost your seat entirely.
ErstO
OMG, are we becoming so lazy we can not stand in line anymore?
Not to mention recently other companies developed standing desks because they say we sit too much and thats not healthy, now Nissan is saying don't stand, sit.
Personally I think this is a vary good example of “Just because we have the tech to make it, doesn't mean we should”
Gizzy Magpie
Wall-E
Douglas Bennett Rogers
I thought this would be a power chair for driving around Las Vegas!
ljaques
I think the chair idea is kinda dumb for many of the reasons others have pointed out. But having this in vehicles would be an outstanding idea. Today, I'm sitting behind twelve other cars at a stoplight. The light turns green, but the brake lights on the cars in front of me take about 4 seconds apiece to go off and for these idiots to figure out that it's time to go, so half of us are left waiting through a second light. Ideally, with this tech in place, as the light turns green, all brake pedals are released and the cars all start to move at the same time, the front-runners accelerating a bit faster than the followers, allowing about 20 cars (3+ times more!) can make it through that same light. The same is true on the freeway. Heavy congestion would be non-existent since the cars would be paying attention while the humans are not. Additionally, turn signals would tell the car next to you and behind you to let you in instantly, and the lag which had plagued us would be over, while traffic became POLITE. I truly hope this comes to _ALL_ cars in the very near future.
Imran Sheikh
Now this is the reason 2016 is not like what early Hollywood movies Writers and our Ancestors expected. Misuse of Resources. if these kind of R&D resources were provides to worthy innovators we would be having flying cars and hover-boards and anti-gravity vehicles by 2007. we are in a parallel crooked time-line which is destroyed by Corporates Sharks Politician and last but not the least these kind of Resource Misuser's. __ Imran Sheikh
AlexandruChiriac
Ljaques ^, spot on!
Matrix29bear
Easier to use a powered treadmill system (as you find on a supermarket checkout table) and a long bench. Of course, as other folk have pointed out, loose cargo at the feet of the sitters won't move with them. Unless you install a "baggage footrest" which is position aligned with the sitting bench treadmill so luggage & purses and pets can all scoot along with the sitters without disturbing the sitters too much. A simple pressure sensor or infrared backrest sensor would handle this cheaply. Downside is that the people bench treadmill seating bench won't "close gaps" automatically in regards to vacant seat zones.
SaysMe
I'm with Encycle on this one!