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posted by takyon on Sunday April 22 2018, @09:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the lackonomy dept.

The hardest known human task has now been mastered by robots... assembling IKEA furniture (archive):

A team from Nanyang Technological University programmed a robot to create and execute a plan to piece together most of Ikea's $25 solid-pine Stefan chair on its own, calling on a medley of human skills to do so. The researchers explained their work in a study published on Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics.

"If you think about it, it requires perception, it requires you to plan a motion, it requires control between the robot and the environment, it requires transporting an object with two arms simultaneously," said Dr. Quang-Cuong Pham, an assistant professor of engineering at the university and one of the paper's authors. "Because this task requires so many interesting skills for robots, we felt that it could be a good project to push our capabilities to the limit."

He and his Nanyang colleagues who worked on the study, Francisco Suárez-Ruiz and Xian Zhou, aren't alone. In recent years, a handful of others have set out to teach robots to assemble Ikea furniture, a task that can mimic the manipulations robots can or may someday perform on factory floors and that involves a brand many know all too well. "It's something that almost everybody is familiar with and almost everybody hates doing," said Ross A. Knepper, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University, whose research focuses on human-robot interaction.

In 2013, Mr. Knepper was part of a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that presented a paper on its work in the area, describing the "IkeaBot" the team created, which could assemble the company's Lack table on its own.

But chairs, with backs, stretchers and other parts, pose a more complex challenge; hence the interest of the Nanyang researchers. Their robot was made of custom software, a three-dimensional camera, two robotic arms, grippers and force detectors. The team chose only off-the-shelf tools, in order to mirror human biology.

Can robots assemble an IKEA chair? (DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.aat6385) (DX)

Older: IkeaBot: An autonomous multi-robot coordinated furniture assembly system (DOI: 10.1109/ICRA.2013.6630673) (DX)

Related: Ikea Buys "Gig Economy" Company TaskRabbit


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by lentilla on Monday April 23 2018, @08:26AM

    by lentilla (1770) on Monday April 23 2018, @08:26AM (#670658)

    No, "I can't put my furniture together" is a real thing.

    Some IKEA pieces can be quite challenging. Like you, I have some experience putting things together - but there's the thing - we have the experience, the practice, and likely a native aptitude (which is what drew us to practice these things in the first place). Not everyone has these skills.

    Aside from a basic ability to follow instructions and wield a hex key, there are a number of other skills that are needed:

    • Situation requirements such as sufficient time to complete the task, and an adequate workspace.
    • Journeyman-level skills such as matching the number and size of screws to what required by the instructions before starting work, and having a feel for the appropriate level of force to use for each component.
    • Interpersonal skills including setting realistic expectations with family (and most especially a spouse) and the ability to say "no, I haven't finished understanding the instructions yet".
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