Teachable Robot Helps Assemble IKEA Furniture 88
cylonlover writes "Teaching a robot how to deal with real-world problems is a challenging task. There has been much progress in building robots that can precisely repeat individual tasks with a level of speed and accuracy impossible for human craftspeople. But there are many more tasks that could be done if robots could be supplied with even a limited amount of judgment. A robotics group led by Professor Sylvain Calinon at the Italian Institute of Technology is making progress in solving this problem and has developed a robot whose purpose in life is to help a person build an IKEA table."
Assemble the robot (Score:5, Funny)
If they could now re-design the robot so that it could be shipped in flat boxes and assembled with an allen key, then that would be a huge step forward. Oh wait...
Re:Assemble the robot (Score:2, Funny)
If they could now re-design a furniture store where customers would buy furniture which would be then delivered to their homes already assembled would be a huge step forward. Oh wait...
Re:Turing test passed! (Score:5, Funny)
Turing test passed!
Only if it shows frustration and regularly emits swear words like "what a piece of shit, the fucking holes don't line up".
Re:The bad news (Score:4, Funny)
But the good news is you can use the inevitable left over parts from assembling to robot to replace the missing parts from assembling the furniture.
Correct the spaces and punctuation... (Score:0, Funny)
A teacher put this problem on a board:
Add spaces and punctuation to make a sentence:
mary chos eisl amab adre ligi onas herp rese ntat iont opic
The conservative student came forward and wrote: Mary chose Islam, a bad religion, as her presentation topic.
The liberal student came forward ans wrote: Mary chose "Islam: a bad religion?" as her presentation topic.
The Muslim student came forward ans wrote: Mary chose "Islamabad religion" as her presentation topic.
The tea party student came forward and said "Duh, I fink it's some sort of code"!
Assembling Ikea furniture... (Score:4, Funny)
The wanted to have it learn how to solve the Riemann hypothesis, but decided to go with a more difficult task instead.
Re:The bad news (Score:5, Funny)
The bad news is you'll need to buy yet another piece of Ikea furniture, a cabinet to store the robot in.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Correct the spaces and punctuation... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:RTFM bot? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh I know the problem! IKEA manuals assume you have a brain!
This is exactly right.
In reality, assembling IKEA stuff isn't much (if any) harder than assembling a certain LEGO design (which most 8 year old children have very little difficulties with).
The whole bitching about assembling IKEA furniture is nothing more than a popular meme originating from and perpetuated by people who consider everything that requires slightly more mental effort than scratching their ass and operating a TV remote a burden.
These are the same people who find operating a microwave or a washing machine mystifying ("How DO they work??").
Re:Assemble the robot (Score:4, Funny)
A robot army that could assemble itself from flat storage - assuming one is operational for the original assembly or hand assembled does sound like something from a sci-fi plot about world domination...
Let me guess, the story is titled "I, Kea".