Robots have already taken a firm place in human life: they collect smartphones and cars,
help rescuers and sappers, carry out
surgery and vacuum the apartment. Industrial manipulators occupy a special place in the world of robots, because they have played an important role in production for several decades.
Scientists decided to
check how good these robots are outside the factory, and forced them to assemble an IKEA chair. Two manipulators coped with the task in 20 minutes, of which half of the time was spent on planning.
The system of two industrial manipulators, equipped with capture devices and pressure sensors, and a 3D camera, was able to solve the task of assembling the
Stephan chair from IKEA within 20 minutes 19 seconds. According
to the representatives of IKEA, a person should cope with this task in 10-15 minutes. The goal of scientists from
Nanyang University of Technology in Singapore was to test the capabilities of modern robots and software.
The tasks of the system created by scientists were the recognition of individual parts of the chair, arbitrarily laid out in front of them, their assembly in the correct order and the prevention of breakdowns. Most of the time was spent on planning the assembly: 11 minutes 21 seconds. The remaining 8 minutes 55 seconds robots were engaged in the assembly. “Our goal was to combine all these opportunities and reach their limits,” said the head of the research team.
Of the four chairs purchased, robots broke a few. Sit on the assembled chair also does not work, since all the details are connected only with wooden pins - the robots were not forced to tighten the bolts with a special key. Pressure sensors were also needed in order not to break the pins, inserting them to the desired depth.
The Science Magazine publication conducted its own experiment in order to compare the results obtained by robots with the work of two people: people were 50 seconds faster. They collected a chair with four hands, but at the same time they did all the work to the end.
Scientists are confident that with the development of artificial intelligence, manipulators could do this work even faster using instruction. But after the uprising of the machines, these robots may
recall this.
Scientific article was published in Sciencemag:
doi: 10.1126 / science.aat9251 .