ROBOT OF THE WEEK: IKEA CHAIR BUILDER
by Hazed
With all the panic about robots taking our jobs, it’s worth remembering that there are some jobs we would love to be able to hand over to a droid. A case in point: a robot has learned how to assemble an IKEA chair.
What’s significant is that this wasn’t a special robot with chair-building software – it was an off-the-shelf robot using open source code that was able to learn how to put the chair together after a few false starts.
Scientists laid out all the parts for the chair, and the robot took 3D photos of them to generate a map of their estimated positions. Then it used custom algorithms to work out how it should move its arms to manipulate the pieces, and how much pressure to exert when trying to fit them together.
Early problems included the bot breaking some of the parts, but on the fourth attempt it succeeded, taking 20 minutes and 19 seconds. Over half of that was thinking time, with the actually build taking nine minutes – a little less than a human, according to IKEA.
Next job: teach the robot to swear as it builds the chair.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/19/machines_learned_to_assemble_ikeas_semidisposable_furniture/
