Robot assembles IKEA chair frame

A robot assembled flat-packed IKEA furniture in about 20 minutes, say scientists at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

The scientists spent three years programming the robot – made of arms, grippers, sensors and 3D cameras – and then put it to work on a task that many humans dread.

It assembled the frame of an IKEA dining chair in 20 minutes, including less than 12 minutes of independent planning.

The NTU team said sifting through pages of instructions and a jumble of screws and bolts to build furniture may soon be a thing of the past given advances in technology.

According to the team leader, Assistant Professor Pham Quang Cuong, it may not be long before robots can fully assemble a piece of furniture from a manual, verbal instruction or by just looking at an image of the finished item.

“We have achieved the low-level capability to teach the robot ‘how to do it’ and then in the next five to 10 years, high level reasoning – the ‘what to do’ – could be done too,” Pham said, adding that they were looking to work with artificial intelligence experts to try and hone the process.

Cindy Andersen, global business area manager of kitchen and dining at IKEA, is positive about the new technology, saying it is "interesting to see an example of how robots could potentially contribute to our vision of creating a better everyday life for many people."

(CGTN)