Friday Fun: DRM chair

Taking DRM further than it’s gone before. DRM (Digital Rights Management) is something that we often just have to put-up-with in software and digital media files. Obviously DRM is a great tool for companies point of view to make sure we only use software and data as they intended, but outside planned obsolescence, there isn’t much in the way of DRM for physical objects.

DRM Chair only works 8 times article tells that a team from the University of Art and Design in Lausanne, Switzerland has designed a chair that can only be sat upon eight times. After that, the chair falls apart necessitating the purchase of a new chair.

There is a video of the chair at Vimeo. The video of device at work is both amusing and a little disconcerting.

There is also a video for a test of the embedded electronics. The basic operation principle of this device is that each time someone sits on the chair (contact switch) the seating limit is decremented. All the joints of the chair are cast in wax with a piece of nichrome wire embedded in the wax. When number of sittings are used an Arduino board controlled relay sends power through the nichrome wire, melting the wax, and returning the chair to its native dowel rod and wooden board form. For more details Les Sugus team web page.

Hopefully DRM is not applied to furniture manufacture in the future.