Robot Conquers One of the Hardest Human Tasks: Assembling Ikea Furniture - The New York Times

I'm sure TaskRabbit’s app is offline while it investigates a “cybersecurity incident” (TechCrunch) is just a coincidence...

"Robots have taken our jobs, learned our chores and beaten us at our own games.

Now researchers in Singapore say they have trained one to perform another task known to confound humans: figuring out how to assemble furniture from Ikea.

A team from Nanyang Technological University programmed a robot to create and execute a plan to piece together most of Ikea’s $25 solid-pine Stefan chair on its own, calling on a medley of human skills to do so. The researchers explained their work in a study published on Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics."

Robot Conquers One of the Hardest Human Tasks: Assembling Ikea Furniture - The New York Times