Semi-autonomous robot assembles IKEA chair frame in 20 minutes
Published on : Monday 30-11--0001
When it comes to robots stealing our jobs, there's one task that plenty of people would be happy to relinquish: assembling flat-pack furniture.
Key points:
- A Singapore team programmed a pair of robotic arms to construct a flat-pack chair frame in 20 minutes
- Such dexterous manipulation requires skills such as vision, motion planning and force control
- If paired with advanced artificial intelligence, the robots could one day be fully autonomous
The day we can handball that job off is a step closer.
In Science Robotics today, a trio of roboticists from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore unveiled a semi-autonomous pair of robotic arms that can put together the frame of an IKEA chair.
Made from off-the-shelf gear, their invention can look at chair parts scattered around, grasp and lift the right bit, carefully insert wooden pins in pre-drilled holes and slot the pieces together.
And while the robot's repertoire of furniture-building skills is limited — it can't yet screw in metal screws, for instance — the technology could soon be ready for jobs that require human-like dexterity, such as electronics and aircraft manufacturing.
Building a builder takes time
The seemingly simple task of putting together a few pieces of wood involved around three years of work, said Quang-Cuong Pham, who is one of the robot's creators.
"Simply programming the robot to pop a pin into a hole took a year."
This is because even though the robotic arms are equipped with 3D cameras, the image resolution isn't quite good enough for the robotic fingers to pop the pin in on the first try all the time.
"The camera is good to around 2 or 3 millimetres, but that's not precise enough for the snug-fitting wooden pins.
"So that's why the pin lands on the surface of the wood block, then moves around to search for the hole."
Sensors on the robotic "wrists" detected if a pin successfully slid into the hole.
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore