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The robots have been developed at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. They can identify the parts and positions of an IKEA chair and decide how to best to assemble it.
Specifically, they assembled Ikea’s Stefan chair in 8 minutes and 55 seconds. But we should also add, prior to the assembly itself, that the robot took 11 minutes and 21 seconds to plan the motion pathways and 3 seconds to locate the parts.
The system was designed by Assistant Professor Pham Quang Cuong and his team from NTU’s School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
The robots themselves comprise a 3D camera and two robotic arms equipped with parallel grippers to pick up objects, running algorithms coded using three different open-source libraries. Force sensors mounted on the wrists help to determine the amount of force required, allowing the robot to precisely detect holes.
Check out the video below to see them in action:
“For a robot, putting together an IKEA chair with such precision is more complex than it looks,” said Assistant Professor Pham. “The job of assembly, which may come naturally to humans, has to be broken down into different steps, such as identifying where the different chair parts are, the force required to grip the parts, and making sure the robotic arms move without colliding into each other.”
“Through considerable engineering effort, we developed algorithms that will enable the robot to take the necessary steps to assemble the chair on its own.”
The NTU team, including research fellow Dr Francisco Suárez-Ruiz and alumnus Mr Zhou Xian, think that the robot could be of greatest value in industrial setttings, performing specific tasks, with precision, where tasks are varied and don’t merit their own specialised machines or assembly lines.
“We are looking to integrate more artificial intelligence into this approach to make the robot more autonomous so it can learn the different steps of assembling a chair through human demonstration or by reading the instruction manual, or even from an image of the assembled product,” added Pham.
The work of the team has just been published in the journal Science Robotics.
Thanks to Sue P. for highlighting this one.
[Via NewAtlas]
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