Assembling Ikea furniture should be a new benchmark for robot dexterity

It can be difficult to keep track of the progress being made in robotics, but one useful (if informal) marker is how good machines are at assembling Ikea furniture. Why? Because putting together your average Billy bookcase involves skills that are intuitive for humans but challenging for robots. Figuring out how a number of components fit together to make a finished product is basically one big 3D puzzle involving complex movements and the manipulation of delicate items like pins and screws. For bigger pieces of furniture, you also have to coordinate multiple actors. (Although admittedly, robots find this part easier than humans.) With that in mind, here’s your latest Ikea Robot Assembly update: they’ve got better again. In a paper p... Continue reading…