One year ago this past NeoCon, when I profiled Sugatsune's Lapcon System of cabinet hardware, I honestly believed I'd never again come across such a user-friendly method of opening and closing cabinets, drawers, kitchen doors and the like. Well, it only took 15 months and an ongoing enthusiastic reception in Designer Pages' Product Wars venue for Aventos’ Servo Drive to distinguish itself in the same way. Brought to the world courtesy of Blum, a manufacturer whose fortunes turn on "turning the opening and closing of furniture into an experience that significantly increases the comfort of motion in all areas of the house, but especially the kitchen," Servo Drive will definitely make those environs more negotiable, not only for human users of every height, but also for family pets.

Servo Drive. Designed by Avento.

In reference to the latter, the automated electrical system of mechanized opening and closing for cabinets overhead and underfoot, drawers of all kinds, and larger pantry-style doors would assure that my chocolate lab never get her tail pinched again. That is, at least in the kitchen. Servo Drive facilitates enhanced ergonomics for all the daily activities of grocery storage, food prep, and clean-up. The system is touch activated via interior sensors, so all you need do to open that head-high bi-fold bin or that corner up-and-over cabinet is lightly pass the tip of a finger on the front. Switches on the cabinet interior reverse the process, and should you second guess your decision to close and reach back inside, an automatic reverse feature senses your presence and opens the works once again.

Servo-Drive can be disabled at any time to revert to manual operation-in the event of a power failure, for instance, when you might be most likely to revert to a candlelight dinner. Other features of Aventos' Servo-Drive include synchronized motion with multiple drive units as might be needed for especially large and heavy fronts; "collision avoidance" to keep adjacent doors from banging into one another; and variable sizes of lifting mechanism to work with all four of Blum's lift systems: bi-fold, up-and-over, lift-up, and stay-lift.