Scientists Create Robots That Can Assemble IKEA Furniture For You (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Although artificial intelligence systems may be able to beat humans at board games, we still have the upper hand when it comes to complicated manual tasks. But now, scientists have created robots that can do something even most humans struggle with: assemble an IKEA chair. Putting together a chair requires a combination of complex movements that, in turn, depends on such skills as vision, limb coordination, and the ability to control force. Until now, that was too much to ask of even a sophisticated robot. But researchers have finally broken the dexterity barrier by combining commercially available hardware, including 3D cameras and force sensors, to build two chair-building bots. To construct their IKEA masterpiece, the robots first took pictures to identify each part of the chair. An algorithm planned the motions the robots needed to manipulate the objects without causing any collisions; two robotic arms then performed those actions in concert. Feedback from force sensors also helped: When the robot needed to insert a pin into a hole, for example, it would slide the pin over the surface until it felt a change in force. The robots were able to put together the chair in a little over 20 minutes, which includes the 11 minutes and 21 seconds of planning time and 8 minutes and 55 seconds of actual assembly. The findings have been reported today in Science Robotics.

Comments

Got to hand it to IKEA

[Brett Buck]

Those Swedish guys really know how to give you almost all the parts you need to make a bookcase!

The only drawback is

[gijoel]

You have to assemble the robot yourself.

Re:The only drawback is

[hcs_$reboot]

You have to assemble the robot yourself.

There is a robot for that.

Re:The only drawback is

[Opportunist]

It's robots all the way down.

And robots at home

[DrYak]

IKEA is cheaper because the customer does the assembly at home.

Yeah.
And I sense here that the business plan is to ship robots at home that will do the assembly for you :
- You still get the cheap flat boxes of furniture from IKEA
- But you delegate the assembly to the robot.

And as you don't constantly need having furniture assembled, you don't actually need to permanently own assembling robots.
You could rent the robots instead.
You could have them shipped to you on the week-end when you plan to buy and assemble new IKEA furniture.
To make things cheaper, the robots could be shipped in cheap flat boxes (it'll just require some quick assembl...

...Wait ! Something went wrong here.

Re:And robots at home

[ShanghaiBill]

And I sense here that the business plan is to ship robots at home that will do the assembly for you :

Or IKEA could just provide an assembly area, with helpful robots available. So you checkout, wheel your cart to the assembly area, the robot assembles your furniture, and then you load the ready-to-go furniture into your van or pickup.

This will not only be convenient, but also promote political harmony, since Democrats shop at IKEA while Republicans drive pickup trucks, so they will need to learn to cooperate.

Re:And robots at home

[DigiShaman]

Nah. IKEA will sell you the robot. You just have to assemble it first.