INTERVIEW: NTU's Francisco Suárez-Ruiz tells us about the recent IKEA chair assembly project, the important role of Robotiq's 2-finger grippers, human-robot collaboration, and his team's future plans.
Pham Quang Cuong (L) and Francisco Suárez-Ruiz (R) show off the robot-assembled IKEA chair.
(Image: Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.)
Francisco Suárez-Ruiz has been all over the news recently, from Wired and CNN to Reuters and beyond.
The Colombian-born roboticist and research fellow (at the CRI Group at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore) led the team that built a robotic system capable of assembling an IKEA chair.
The system comprises a 3D camera and two robotic arms equipped with Robotiq 2-finger adaptive grippers, and supported by coded algorithms built on four different open-source libraries (OpenRAVE, OpenCV, ROS, and PCL).
In total, the assembly process took 20 min 19 s: 3 s for localization, 11 min 21 s for motion planning, and 8 min 55 s for execution.
(French language)
Robotiq: What role, if any, do you foresee for humans in systems like the IKEA chair-assembling bot? If the same system (or a cell) used a human and a robot to achieve the same end, do you think that would make a difference (e.g. in terms of task completion times), and how might you divide the labor?
S-R: Because we worked with traditional industrial robots rather than cobots, there was no role for humans in the system we developed. With industrial robots, the role of humans is limited for safety reasons.
If the robots were collaborative, I would imagine some human-robot collaboration would result in faster chair assembly.
I'm not sure about dividing tasks between human and robots – I'm not an expert in that subject – but I can imagine some collaboration in the form of handing over pieces, manually fastening screws, etc.
Robotiq: If you were tasked with designing and deploying a manufacturing cell with high production requirements and quality standards for assembly of IKEA chairs, would you use the current system or a human-robot collaborative design?
S-R: Under those requirements, I think a collaborative system would make more sense. Such a system would definitely help in terms of task completion times and flexibility of the system. With the new developments in AI, I think the hard parts (from a collaboration perspective) like ‘reading’ human intentions are much closer to being solved, so I would expect human-robot collaboration to grow even more over the years.
Robotiq: What's next for this project?
S-R: For now, the team is exploring the possibility of using AI to help the robot figure out the sequence of instructions from a manual. This is something we are just starting to explore.
We've also started working with other exciting applications, such as handling, drilling, glue dispensing, and inspection, where several of the capabilities developed to assemble the IKEA chair can be applied.
Robotiq: Do you have any plans to commercialize the technology?
S-R: Yes; in fact, the team has been working on commercializing the technology for the past year. We are currently focusing our efforts on industrial applications that are pain-points in existing production lines, particularly in the high-mix low-volume sector.
Robotiq: Thanks again for speaking with us. It's great to see our grippers being used in exciting research work like yours.
S-R: Thanks for having me.
Further reading:
“Can robots assemble an IKEA chair?,” Science Robotics: Volume 3, Issue 17, April 2018.