Even Robots Suck at Building Ikea Furniture

Folks have been fantasy for years about the possibility of an Ikea - savvy robot . If Ikeauses robots to flat pack its furniture , surely we world could use automaton to assemble it ! But despite at least a decade of attempts , one matter stay on clear : Robotsare severe at building Ikea furniture .

The latest attempt at the Ikea piece of furniture - building robotcomes from Singapore . A couple of research worker at the Nanyang Technological University are developing robots that can handle chore in messy environment . ( Think : What happen when you give an Ikea box anddump everything on the floor . ) The researcher settle to try out their robots by making them assemble Ikea chair .

Broadly speaking , robotsexcel at simple , linear chore . build a piece of Ikea furniture , however , is scarcely that . It demand hunt for pieces and then hunting for the places those art object need to go , while trying to carry the half - assembled slice together . Humanshave a hard enough time doing this , but our brains are also hardwired for temporary expedient while trouble - resolution and our hands have no worry set up little wooden leg in small golf hole . automaton , on the other hand , have a very hard time .

Anewly published papercalled A Framework for Fine Robotic Assembly outlines how the researcher overcame the peg - in - hole job . In brief , the assembly of an Ikea bit ask placing dowels into small holes , a job that tests the robotic visual modality organisation ’s terminal point of positional truth . Both the dowel and the mess are tiny and difficult to see , so the Nanyang researcher enabled the automaton to “ find ” the pieces . Fitting them together is even harder , but the research worker figured out that a pre - programmed series of motility that essentially amount to a system of rules of trial - and - erroneousness would ultimately deliver the goods . It ’s not very graceful , though .

consider it or not , this is about as skilful as it gets in terms of Ikea furniture - assembling golem . MIT ’s IkeaBot is a cheeseparing second . The autonomous KUKA robots wowed audience at the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automationby set up a Lack table . As impressive as that is , it ’s deserving notice that the Lack table is a very soft piece of furniture to put together . Or at least it ’s a less complicated game of Lego than the professorship that the researchers in Singapore instruct its automaton to progress .

So if you ’re looking for a bot that can just whisk together your Malm dresser , you ’re out of fortune . Robots are getting better by the year . However , it ’ll be a few more before a golem that can do your task for you go far .

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