Meet Future Automation: Installing Cutting Edge Displays in Ground-breaking Ways

Posted on 3rd June, 2021
Meet Future Automation: Installing Cutting Edge Displays in Ground-breaking Ways

While today’s flat-screen TVs are less likely to overwhelm your home decor than the massive old CRT monsters we were once lumbered with, they can still feel like they dominate your life. All too often, the entire design and layout of our living spaces seem to be dictated by the need to accommodate the latest big-screen beast, especially if you’re keen enough on home cinema to want to install a projector system. 

Thanks to the innovative efforts of the unique engineering company Future Automation (FA), it doesn’t have to be this way. Start combining your displays with FA’s unique motorised screen mount solutions, and your love of big-screen entertainment can become another elegant part of your living space rather than some sort of ‘design dictator’.

Future Automation has over 20 years of experience designing and manufacturing a comprehensive range of automated ‘lifestyle’ technology solutions, including TV lift mechanisms, wall mounts, projector mounts/drops, moving panel mechanisms, ceiling mounts, and much more besides. 

What’s more, as well as its established range of products, FA has an in-house design team that can also create entirely bespoke solutions for more complex or specific needs. So flexible can FA’s designs be, that more often than not, the only limit on what’s possible when it comes to designing how technology fits into your space is your imagination.

To give you some idea of how far-ranging Future Automation’s solutions can be, let’s look at a few examples of its work.

The Living Room to Cinema Room switch

It’s not always convenient, desirable or even possible to fit separate living and home cinema rooms in your home. So for many AV fans, the dream is to have a room that can double up as both a family space and a serious movie theatre without either scenario compromising the other. 

Thanks to Future Automation, you could make this dream a reality by having your projector fitted to a projector lift so that it can be tucked up into the ceiling when you don’t need it. Combine this with a sofa that magically glides back to make a cinema seat for movies, and then slides back forward again when you want to get back to sitting around the living room coffee table. 

The invisible TV

For many, the dream design solution for a TV, especially now they’re getting so large, is to have them disappear entirely when they’re not being watched. Cue Future Automation’s moving panel systems. 

These allow you to put TVs behind sliding panels that can be finished to match the decor around them. The panels can be installed as a split system that come together from left and right when it’s time to put the TV away, or as a single sliding cover that can be installed to move horizontally or vertically as they cover and uncover your TV. 

The panels covering the TV can even be made to fit flush with the surrounding decor, thanks to a mechanism that draws them back so that they can slide behind the surrounding panelling when you want to watch TV. Finally, it pushes them forward again once you’ve moved them back into place over the screen.

A variation on this theme allows you to hide your TV behind a painting or framed photograph, with the wall art either simply lifting out of the way or, if the picture or photo has been installed in a modular way, slide apart in the middle.

The ultimate bedroom solution

While Future Automation has plenty of solutions for having TVs rise out of furniture when you want to watch - particularly helpful in ‘second room’ locations - it can go the extra mile in bedrooms thanks to a motorised rig that can actually hide the TV under the bed. 

When it’s time for some shut-eye, pressing a single button allows the TV to lean back from its vertical in-use position at the foot of the bed until it’s flat enough to retract completely out of sight beneath your bed frame.

One other design detail worth adding here is that if the frame of the FA product you’re using is going to be visible, you can have its electrostatically charged powder coating colour matched to your decor.

Impressive and varied though these three examples are, they barely scrape the surface of the myriad solutions Future Automation can supply. You’ll seriously struggle to find any AV scenario in any room for which the company hasn’t either already got a fully realised solution or can’t come up with a brand new approach.

Future Automation’s expansive product range is a clear sign of the experience its engineers have of working with a wide variety of customers and customer needs. The company also works extensively, though, with professionals in the interior design, custom installation and furniture design worlds, ensuring that it’s always open to new ideas and suggestions.

Obviously, the concern with any heavy-duty, sophisticated automation systems like those offered by Future Automation is that they won’t wear well, or will be prone to breaking down. However, the company makes a point of keeping its entire production process in-house so that it can constantly monitor the quality of its products at every stage of the manufacturing process, from design through to final delivery and installation. As Future Automation puts it, “this helps us ensure that the mechanisms we produce meet our exacting standards, every time.”

While most of our readers will be interested in FA’s residential installation rigs and devices, its products can also be found in everything from superyachts to high-end commercial offices.

If all this talk of taking your home entertainment system to a new level without compromising your living space has whet your appetite, then check out the company's website for more information. 

Visit Future Automation

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John Archer's avatar
John Archer

I’ve spent the past 25 years writing about the world of home entertainment technology. In that time I’m fairly confident that I’ve reviewed more TVs and projectors than any other individual on the planet, as well as experiencing first-hand the rise and fall of all manner of great and not so great home entertainment technologies.

Posted in: Lifestyle | Integration | Technology | Smart Homes & IoT

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