Engineers train robotic arms with IKEA furniture

Engineers from Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) decided to try to train a robot with two manipulators by trial and error to manage the details of the furniture. In the description of their work, scientists talk about the simulation of an unstructured workplace, where robots need to deal with small and fragile details that lie without a particular system.

Have you ever found yourself in the same caricature situation when you cannot cope with the assembly of furniture from IKEA? With the saying, "Yes, I will collect everything myself," the man usually disappears for a long time in a pile of instructions, packaging, and furniture parts, from which occasionally harsh expressions and exclamations, "yes, where did she go?"

It is not known how the researchers had the idea to test their robotic manipulators, assembling parts of furniture, but do not be in a hurry to rejoice - judging by the test results, the robots are still assembling furniture.
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No, of course, the robot can perform the same simple operation accurately and flawlessly. But complex things, operating with various objects and acting on the situation are still available for them with great difficulty.

A Singaporean robot had to insert a furniture dowel (also known as "that little piece of wood that is inserted into the hole") into the hole in one of the wooden parts of the furniture frame. The essence of the training was that preliminary maps of the location of the holes in the details were not recorded in the computer's memory.

The robot is equipped with a video camera and pressure sensors, which allow it to assess the situation and to understand whether the shkant entered the hole, or the manipulator missed him past the parts. So far, even such a simple human action takes a robot a long enough time to perform.