A supplement to Ian's answer: Here is the largest-area sofa known, due to Gerver: <hr /> ![GerverSofa][1] <hr /> > Gerver, Joseph L. (1992). "On Moving a Sofa Around a Corner". *Geometriae Dedicata* 42 (3): 267–283. ([Springer link](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02414066).) **Added** (triggered by @GeraldEdgar's remark). The computational complexity of algorithms grows exponentially in the dimension, about $n^5$ for polyhedral objects with $n$ vertices moving in $\mathbb{R}^3$. Here is an algorithm moving an $n{=}4500$-triangle piano through a challenging apartment requiring several tricky maneuvers: <hr /> ![Piano][2] <hr /> > Kuffner, James J., and Steven M. LaValle. "RRT-connect: An efficient approach to single-query path planning." *Robotics and Automation*, 2000. Proceedings. ICRA'00. IEEE International Conference on. Vol. 2. IEEE, 2000. ([IEEE link](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=844730&abstractAccess=no&userType=inst).) Not surprisingly, the problem is also called *The Piano Mover's Problem*. [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/FBlms.png [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/le9JF.png