REAL LIFE NEWS: FLAT-PACK BOTS
by Hazed
Ikea furniture. My flat is furnished with it throughout, and it looks very good. But oh my, the hassle of assembling it...
A new innovation may just take the pain out of flat-pack furniture. A team from MIT has developed a pair of robots that team up to build a coffee table. One of them holds each table leg in position while the other screws it into place with a gripper on the end of its arm.
The two mobile robots are called Kuka youBots and they follow a blueprint which has been especially designed to be robot-friendly. Yes, well, Ikea's instructions are certainly not human-friendly so I hope the robots get on better with them than I do.
So far the robots have only been given the blueprints for the simplest of builds - the Lack coffee tables, of which I have several in my flat, and which even I managed to assemble without too much trauma. It's basically just the table top with four legs which screw into place. But the MIT team plan to expand the robots assembling repertoire, so they can tackle a lot of different types of furniture.
This innovation can't come soon enough!
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829156.700-ikeabots-build-flatpack-furniture.html
