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Do you fear a world run by robots? Don't worry, they can't even assemble IKEA furniture! Droids struggle with delicate skills needed for flat pack furniture

Advanced robotic arms took a minute and a half to insert a doweling rod
The system uses 3D vision tracking and pressure sensors for the task
But engineers say chaotic flat packed furniture is beyond modern robots
They have set assembling an IKEA chair as a major goal of robot research

Published: 04:56 EST, 30 September 2015 | Updated: 06:35 EST, 30 September 2015

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While there are many who fear robots are on the verge of stealing our jobs and taking over the world, it seems they have a weak spot – flat packed furniture.

Much like stairs posed a problem for the Daleks in Doctor Who, the Achilles Heel of modern intelligent robots appears to be the baffling world of IKEA furniture.

Now a group of engineers have set themselves the goal of developing a robot capable of undertaking this baffling task – by getting one to assemble a chair from the Swedish furniture store.

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A team of engineers have set themselves the challenge of designing a robot that can assemble an IKEA chair. The mess of delicate components present a particular challenge to robots as they require fine motor control and complex vision tracking system. So far they have only been able to insert a doweling rod (pictured)

A team of engineers have set themselves the challenge of designing a robot that can assemble an IKEA chair.

For those who have found themselves confounded and frustrated by rogue screws and missing bits of doweling when assembling furniture from the store, it may come as a relief.

WILL A ROBOT TAKE YOUR JOB?

They have been taking over manual roles and replacing workers on factory production lines for decades, but robots might soon be doing the jobs of white collar workers too.

A survey of workplace managers has suggested that the world depicted in the hit TV series Humans, where the lines between technology and people are increasingly blurred, could become a reality.

It found 70 per cent of managers would consider using a robot on their team and almost half would not feel bad about replacing a human job with a robot.

While creative jobs such as marketing and design were seen as been unsuitable for robots, office managers, finance roles and IT were areas where managers felt they may play a role.

Most feel machines would be better placed to perform roles like administration, answering the telephone, emailing and writing reports.

The researchers say the finely tuned control needed to assemble small and fragile objects from a chaotic mixture of parts is still 'out of reach of today's industrial robots'.

Francisco Suarz-Ruiz and Quang-Cuong Pham, from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, are using two robotic arms equipped with grippers to assemble the IKEA chair.

Each of the robotic arms has six axis of motion and the grippers have pressure sensors to detect how hard they are squeezing objects they hold and how much they are pushing pieces together.

Six cameras also act like the robots eyes, allowing it to track the flat pack pieces with an accuracy of around 3mm.

Yet despite being some of the most advanced robotic equipment around, assembling a full chair still seems beyond the robot at the moment.

The furthest the scientists have managed to get is to insert a piece of doweling into the end of one of the legs – something that takes the technology a painful minute and a half to achieve.

The same task would take the average homeowner seconds when they are assembling their own chairs.

The researchers have built two robotic arms which have six axis of movement and grippers for picking up and manipulating the pieces of the IKEA chair. They are designed to work together to complete the task much like human arms and use six cameras to help them track the different pieces of the furniture

Writing in a paper published on the open source website Arxiv.org, they said: 'The main difficulties arise in the precise localization of the parts in an unstructured environment and the control of contact interactions.

'This work will continue until completion of all the tasks required for assembling an IKEA chair.'

The researchers say while they are using flat pack furniture assembly as a demonstration of the vision, tracking and fine control technology needed for such tasks, these robots could have major implications for industry.

It took the robot a minute and half to insert a single piece of doweling rod into piece of IKEA furniture, something that would have taken most homeowners just a few seconds to achieve

While most humans find assembling flat packed furniture a frustrating and often baffling task (pictured), it seems robots still have a long way to go to catch up with our ability to fit together the jigsaw of components

Robots capable of such fine tasks, which currently require skilled workers in factories, could take from humans on the production lines in electronics factories, making clothing and even food.

Currently industrial robots are restricted to heavy industries such as car assembly lines where they undertake a pre-programmed set of tasks repeatedly.

To be successful in other industries, the robots need to use 3D vision systems and feedback from sensors to help them track components and avoid destroying them.

The researchers said: 'There are some major challenges that still prevent the automation of many repetitive tasks – especially in light industries – such as the assembly of small parts in the electronics, shoes or food industries.

The robotic arms are able to move 360 degrees but were most effective in the area where their reach crossed over, as shown in the illustration above

The Daleks from Doctor Who (pictured) were long thought to have a weak spot in the form of stairs, but it seems for real-life robots it is the menace of flat packed furniture that defeats them

'We believe the key to automatizing 'light' industries lies in augmenting existing industrial position controlled manipulators with extra functionalities.'

The team have been developing 'smart planning, sensing and control software' to help their robots achieve their task.

They say they used off-the-shelf components for their robotic arms and as new technologies become available they should become more efficient.

To insert the doweling rod into the end of a piece of wood, for example, their robot scratches it over the surface measuring the force it encounters until it is able to insert the pin.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 'AS DANGEROUS AS NUCLEAR WEAPONS'

Artificial intelligence has the potential to be as dangerous to mankind as nuclear weapons, a leading pioneer of the technology has claimed.

Professor Stuart Russell, a computer scientist who has lead research on artificial intelligence, fears humanity might be 'driving off a cliff' with the rapid development of AI.

He fears the technology could too easily be exploited for use by the military in weapons, putting them under the control of AI systems.

His views echo those of people like Elon Musk who have warned recently about the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Professor Stephen Hawking also joined a group of leading experts to sign an open letter warning of the need for safeguards to ensure AI has a positive impact on mankind.

Dr Stuart Armstrong, from Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute, has also predicted that intelligent robots could soon take over the running of countries.

He believes it's a race against time to develop safeguards around artificial intelligence research, before robots outwit us.

Professor Hawking has said: 'The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.'