The Smartspace project invests 1.7 million in smart furniture

An outdoor sofa that collects indicators such as temperature or sun exposure, a display unit for stores that alerts if products have been out of place for too long, and a highly precise and efficient automatic door to detect people's intention to pass are the first three prototypes developed with the Smartspace project.

The program has been promoted with the aim of digitalizing a sector little accustomed to doing so until now, such as habitat and interior design, and has had an investment of 1.7 million euros from a consortium formed by companies and research centers.

Three companies have been involved in the creation of the different prototypes. These are Kave Home, a Girona-based company specializing in the design, manufacture, and distribution of furniture with a presence in more than 80 countries, responsible for the smart sofa.

For its part, Arquetypo, a company from Vilassar de Mar specialized in wooden interior design projects for retail and hospitality, has created the display unit that monitors objects.

And, finally, Motion4, a manufacturer of automatic doors located in Santiga, has developed a new sensor for detecting people with a combination of visual and laser technology, and which, thanks to a complex Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm, learns to detect users' intention to pass, to only activate and open the door when the sensor detects that the user really wants to cross.

The different products developed have been installed on a pilot basis in spaces such as the Hotel Le Méridien Ra in El Vendrell or the showrooms of Arquetypo in Vilassar de Dalt or that of WEcontract BCN, managed by the habitat cluster CENFIM, which has been the association that has led the project.

The consortium created by the three companies has also had the know-how of the technological centers Eurecat, Leitat, and the i2CAT Foundation. From Eurecat and the i2CAT Foundation, an IoT platform and a gateway have been developed that allow, respectively, to connect any habitat product with sensors. This platform, together with the gateway, unites the different communication protocols of each product, facilitates their connection to each other, and centralizes all the data they provide to offer value both for the space manager and for the product user.

For its part, the third technology center, Leitat, has developed a set of low-power environmental quality sensor nodes focused on adding value to the rest of the solutions and improving knowledge and control over the environmental comfort parameters of habitat spaces.