Your votes have been counted and the IKEA Markus is your pick for Best Gaming Chair For Your Desk. At $200, the Markus is arguably the best value in the desk chair landscape, and finished second in Lifehacker’s Best Office Chair Hive Five. This is a somewhat problematic winner, because not everyone lives near an IKEA, and their shipping is prohibitively expensive. For those of you still looking for a great chair at an affordable price, we’re going to step in and recommend the Tempur-Pedic TP9000 Ergonomic Mesh Mid-Back Task Chair. This is the chair I use at home, after discovering it in this Lifehacker article. merce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here to learn more, and don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter. We want your feedback.When readers buy products and services discussed on our site, we often earn affiliate commissions that support our work. More On: Running a Business
The page you were searching for could not be found. It's possible the address was typed incorrectly, or that the page no longer exists. You can login or register for the site, run a quick search here, or also explore other options below. Not a Member Yet? Join now, It is quick, easy and FREE. Get access to our entire program, including: Food tracker and personalized meal plans Support from our experts on message boards Articles, recipes, tips, and much more!The Herman Miller Aeron is easily one of the most well-known office chairs ever made. There’s science and style to support the $700+ price tag new, but it’s hard to justify that price when someone else isn’t footing the bill. Instead of picking up a used Aeron, check out some of our favorite office chair alternatives that will, stylishly, fit just about any budget. ITALMODERN Bungie Office Chair At first, the idea of sitting on a chair made of the same things you use to secure things to the roof of your truck might seem ridiculous.
It can’t possibly be comfortable. The bungees are definitely going to stretch. The ergonomics are terrible. The only problem with this ridiculously comfortable chair is that everyone that visits HAS to sit in the chair made of bungee cords. IKEA Markus Office Chair Don’t let the fact that this is made by IKEA immediately dissuade you from purchasing it because the construction is nothing like their fiberboard furniture. Markus is a high back chair with a padded seat, headrest and armrests that also has a mesh back for breathability. It won’t win any Red Dot Design Awards, but it’s a great professional looking chair that also comes with a 10-year Limited Warranty. AIS Element 9600 Executive Office Chair Affordable Interior Systems (AIS) has been in the office furniture game for almost three decades, so it’s safe to say they know what it takes to make a great chair. The Element Executive Chair has a mesh back and a mesh over foam cushioned seat for maximum comfort and support.
It also comes in multiple sizes and styles in case you’re looking for something a little different. WorkPro Commercial Mesh Back Executive Office Chair With a three-part, split-back design, this WorkPro office chair is probably the most alien looking of the lot, but those aspects give it a huge amount of adjustability. Adjust the back sections to perfectly fit you. Slide the seat forwards or backwards based on your mood. There’s even a large handle on the back in case you need to move it over carpet… or with someone in it. Modern in Designs Reproduction Eames Office Chair When it comes to Mid-Century Modern chairs Eames is the name of the game, and their cost reflects that. This reproduction from Modern In Designs replicates the iconic ribbed styling of the chair originally designed in the 50’s, but does it at a fraction of the cost. Since each chair is hand crafted with a stainless steel frame and premium Italian leather, you’re not sacrificing much in terms of quality.
RFM Seating Rainier High Back Chair The Rainier Office Chair from RFM Seating puts more than 35 years of experience in seating manufacturing to very good use. You get the standards like multiple back options, multi-function control, extra lumbar support and a ratchet back, but the Rainier also gives you 35 fabric options, multiple control options and close to ten different arm options. In other words, you can customize it to fit an of office of one to an office of one thousand. Alera Elusion Series Mesh High-Back Chair We’re convinced the Alera Elusion chair was designed by someone who studied Henry Ford. The chair does its job as a chair, but nothing more. The aesthetics are great, but they’re not revolutionary. The cost is something everyone can afford. Oh yeah, and you can have it in whatever color you want… as long as it’s black. Merax Ergonomic Racing Style Napping Office Chair If we’re being completely honest, this Merax chair looks like a Recaro racing seat with armrests and casters, which we’re totally in to.
In addition to the unconventional styling you also get: easy to clean and maintain PU leather and mesh fabric construction, adjustable armrests, 360 degree swivel rotation, a full headrest and a recline function. The recline function is where the “napping” part comes in because the chair gets almost fully horizontal for that afternoon “meeting” post business lunch. A View from Emerging Technology from the arXiv Moon-Landing Equivalent for Robots: Assembling an IKEA Chair Robots are poor at many activities that humans find simple. Now roboticists are making progress on a task that exemplifies them all: the automated assembly of an IKEA chair. Humans have long feared that robots are taking over the world. The truth, however, is more prosaic. It’s certainly the case that robots have revolutionized certain tasks such as car manufacturing, for example. But in many real world tasks, robots come a poor second to humans. They find it impossible to work in the messy, cluttered environment that humans cope with easily.
They have difficulty locating and picking up small objects and they lack the fine control to assemble components.All these problems are exemplified in a single task—the assembly of an IKEA chair. This is an activity that many humans will have performed with varying degrees of success but one that robots simply cannot complete. At least not yet. Now Francisco Suarez-Ruiz and Quang-Cuong Pham at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, have set themselves the goal of assembling an IKEA chair using a robot. And today, they reveal the progress they have made. Their robot isn’t quite capable of completing the entire task but it has taken significant steps in that direction.The robot in question consists of two arms capable of six-axis motion, each equipped with parallel grippers to pick up objects. These grippers cannot manipulate objects “in-hand” once they are picked up. However, they are common in industry so any lessons that Suarez-Ruiz and Pham learn will be widely applicable.
The grippers also have force sensors to determine how strongly they are gripping and how powerfully they push objects into contact with each other. The robot also has a vision system consisting of six cameras that can track up to five objects with a positional accuracy of around three millimeters.That’s an impressive piece of kit but it comes up against a formidable adversary in the form of an IKEA chair.Suarez-Ruiz and Pham have broken down the job of assembly into various sub tasks. One of these is the insertion of a small wooden cylinder, a dowel, into a hole in another stick of wood.This activity itself is made up of three tasks. First, one arm has to locate and pick up the dowel. Second, the other arm has to locate and pick up the wooden stick. Finally, the robot has to locate the hole and insert the dowel into it.That robot immediately runs into a number of problems. The first is that the dowel is only a few millimeters in size and so close to the vision system’s limit of positional accuracy.
Suarez-Ruiz and Pham solve this with a protocol in which the robot places the parallel grippers near the dowel, while “feeling” that it is in contact with the table. It then closes its grip slowly to grasp the dowel.The stick is easier to grasp. But the hole within it is hard to locate because it too is at the boundary of what the vision the system can detect.Suarez-Ruiz and Pham have another protocol to solve this. The robot places the dowel on the stick near the hole and performs a pre-programmed sequence of motions to map out the shape of the surface and its edges using its force sensors. It then explores the surface near the hole by pushing the dowel gently against the surface until it enters the hole.And that’s it—the first successful robotic insertion of a wooden dowel into a hole in something like real world conditions. Suarez-Ruiz and Pham have posted a video of their robot in action here.That’s an important step toward the deceptively difficult task of assembling an IKEA chair.
And the duo is determined to go further. “This work will continue until completion of all the tasks required for assembling an IKEA chair,” they say.Of course, the conditions aren’t quite what most humans have to cope with. The parts are clearly visible on a white table under good lights, rather than strewn on the floor in a poorly lit attic surrounded by cardboard packaging. Neither are there other distractions such as missing parts, know-it-all “helpers” or screaming kids in background.But perhaps the biggest problem is that this system cannot interact with humans, who have to be kept away entirely lest the robot injure them. That’s a problem that other groups are beginning to deal with.Perhaps together, these groups will come up with a machine that can successfully complete tasks that require fine motor control, under a wide range of real world conditions without injuring the humans around them. In many ways, this goal is the equivalent of the moon landings for robotics—it is an extremely difficult, but easily imagined task that could have a huge impact on humankind.