Page 16 - IAV Digital Magazine #449

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
University's Robot
Builds Ikea Chair In
About 20 Minutes
By Ben Hooper
April 20 (UPI) -
- Scientists at a university in Singapore showed off the capabilities of their robots by having one of the machines assem- ble an Ikea chair.
The Nanyang Technological University researchers relea sed a
video showing the robot using two mechanical arms to build an Ikea Stefan chair.
The team said they programmed the robot with the order of the instructions and then spread the parts randomly around the robot- ic arms.
The arms used a 3D camera to map the locations of the pieces and spent about 11 minutes planning its movements before building the chair in about nine minutes.
"The job of assembly, which may come natu- rally to humans, has to be broken down into differ- ent steps, such as identifying where the differ- ent chair parts are, the force required to grip the parts, and making sure the robotic arms move without col- liding into each other," assistant professor Pham Quang Cuong said on the school's website.
The researchers
published their findings in the April issue of Science Robotics.
"We are looking to integrate more artificial intelli- gence into this approach to make the robot more autonomous so it can learn the dif- ferent steps of assembling a chair through human demon- stration or by reading the instruction manu- al, or even from an image of the assembled prod- uct," he said.
Colorado Woman Fined $500 For Possession of Apple
By Ray Downs
April 22 (UPI) -
- A Colorado woman traveling home from France was charged $500 because she was in posses- sion of an apple.
On a flight from Paris to Denver, Delta Air Lines staff handed out apples for an in- flight snack and Crystal Tadlock put hers in her purse to save for later.
But she said once she carried the apple onto U.S. grounds, a customs agent informed her she
broke
a customs rule by not declaring the free fruit, even though it was still wrapped in Delta packaging.
"He had asked me if my trip to France was expensive and I said, 'yeah.' I didn't really get why he was ask- ing that question, and then he said 'It's about to get a lot more expensive after I charge you $500,'" Tadlock told Fox 31-TV. "It's really unfor- tunate someone has to go through that and be treated like a criminal over a
piece of fruit."
Tadlock said Delta should have been more diligent about warning passen- gers to not carry produce off the plane.
A Delta official told The Washington
Post that its food "is given with intention you consume it on board."
In a statement, the carrier said
it encourages fly- ers to "follow U.S. Customs and Border Protection proto- cols."
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