On the screen, the wardrobe was already upstairs. Now for the corner.

The wardrobe is on the ground floor. On the screen, it is almost upstairs. A neat blue line runs from the front door to the new flat. The wardrobe, however, appears to have a different opinion about the corner beside the lift.

I’m Faye, your Future editor. Today I’m looking at an imaginary moving system. The planning software is impressive. The wardrobe is mostly wide.

A route can’t accommodate everything

In my future scene, a resident has entered the belongings to be moved into a digital system. Boxes, a table, that wardrobe. A self-driving transport trolley would help with the heavy journeys back and forth. On paper, it looks like a pleasant partnership.

Then someone who actually knows the building comes to have a look. She points not at the screen, but at the lift entrance. And the space in front of it.

No miraculous new calculation suddenly makes wood bend. The wardrobe stays where it is while the movers discuss another approach.

I don’t see that as the future failing. It is the moment the future finally takes a look at the building.

The corner is part of the design too

When I imagine tools like these, I want to look beyond the machine itself. Where does its work begin? Where does it need to turn? Where can it stop without blocking the ordinary passageway?

My suggestion to designers of such possible services: include the transitions in your trial. Not just a transport trolley on an empty test floor, but the entire route from arrival to destination. With objects that don’t all come in the most convenient shape.

That is a wish for the design, not a claim that an existing system can already do this. Nor is it moving advice. Someone must first establish what can safely be done with the wardrobe in our story.

The box of plants can come too

I would like a future in which help works even when the world doesn’t look like the demonstration. Your homes also contain a crooked plant pot, an old armchair and a box marked “miscellaneous”. That last one is a remarkably broad field of research.

Later in our scene, the transport trolley takes boxes towards the lift. The wardrobe gets a plan of its own. Nobody has to pretend one route was best for every possession.

I leave the blue line where it is for a moment. Beside it, I draw the corner a little larger.

The future is welcome to be clever. As long as it leaves room for what you really want to bring along.