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Science

Pro-Active Furniture Assembly 267

Posted by Hemos from the no-don't-put-it-in-there dept.
Gudlyf writes "Stavros Antifakos, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, has designed "clever" furniture pieces with built-in microprocessors that could relieve the confusion, anger and frustration of putting them together. The idea includes a flat-pack furniture kit whose parts are fitted with cheap microprocessors that monitor what you are doing during assembly and will warn you if you are doing something wrong or dangerous."
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Pro-Active Furniture Assembly

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  • Your chair is ajar! (Score:4, Funny)

    by RatBastard ( 949 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @12:22PM (#4200547) Homepage
    This sounds like a pain in the ass to me. But that's me.

    • This sounds like a pain in the ass to me. But that's me.

      Only if they include a electrode feedback option for posture correction...

    • Marvin's take (Score:2, Funny)

      by bLanark ( 123342 )
      You know Marvin, the paranoid android, from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? What would happen if they used his "personality"?

      "It's no use checking all the bits are there before you start, because you're bound to lose some, everybody does."

      "You need to tighten it harder. You need to tighten it harder." (SNAP!) "I knew that was going to happen, it always does".

      "Brain the size of a planet, and what do they get me to do? Make sure this moron that can barely string a sentence together can screw this table together. I ask you! Brain the size of a planet!"

  • Sounds more like the ultimate nagware to me! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nomad7674 ( 453223 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @12:23PM (#4200549) Homepage Journal
    How many of us want to hear "Error: Slot A should be inserted into slot B, not into dowel X" every time we try to put together a kitchen cabinet? I know some of my "best" work has included some errors that actually helped the overall design for *MY* use.

    Just my 2 cents

  • Yeah, if it's so smart, why doesn't it assemble itself together?
  • But I think I'll stick to paper instructions, thankya very much.

  • Dubious use of technology? (Score:5, Funny)

    by binaryDigit ( 557647 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @12:26PM (#4200563)
    Maybe I'm getting crochety in my old age, but does this seem like a monumental waste of time/technology? Hell, how difficult is furniture to put together anyway? This sounds a lot like the blinking "12:00" thing. Why not just make improvements to the design itself so it's not so complex to put together. Are we talking about putting together space shuttle command chairs here or something? I assume the next version will have blue tooth and will send you pictures of the proper installation as well as play mp3's. It will obviously have to have a change detector for the couch version that automatically updates a website with the current total, as well as a volume/mass summary of lint and crumbs.

    • I'm forced to agree. When I moved into my first apartment, Ikea [ikea.com] was a good way to get new and moderately stylish furniture for not a lot of money.

      Once I got their stuff unpacked and ready to assemble, I was truly impressed by the instructions inside -- no words, no writing that wasn't legally necessary at all. They used perspective illustrations and nothing else, and managed to successfully convey exactly how to assemble the product, including what tools to use, with only that. Solved the international language problem completely, as well as the lesser-known possibility that your customer is actually illiterate.

      All their products are this way, in my experience. Bottom line: if you take the time and thought to make the instructions clear, and minimize the amount of assembly actually needed, you won't need "smart chips" to beep at when you're doing it backwards.
      • Hmm...only trouble I see with Ikea, in browsing their site, is you have to spend quite a bit to get an item that's not either (a) made of wicker, or (b) apparently designed by someone under the influence of LSD. Do people actually buy giant day-glo-orange barrels with seat-shaped depressions in them to sit on in their living rooms? ;-)

        Most of my furniture is secondhand (for the big items), or Wal-Mart flatpack (for shelves, tables, and the like). All of the flatpack stuff was pretty easy to put together. It's not all that pretty, but I prefer function over form anyway, and at least it doesn't look like a reject from a Picasso painting. ;)

        DennyK

  • Great... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Caradoc ( 15903 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @12:26PM (#4200564) Homepage
    The cost of bookshelves will go up because people can't (or won't) RTFM.

    Am I the only one who sees a certain irony in this?

    In any case, you can't make anything foolproof - as soon as you do, someone breeds a dumber fool.

    • Re:Great... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Loligo ( 12021 )
      >people can't (or won't) RTFM

      Ever tried to read the manual for imported furniture?

      And you thought electronics manuals could be scary...

      -l
    • "The cost of bookshelves will go up because people can't (or won't) RTFM."

      Or maybe they'll get cheaper. Imagine that adding the electronics raises the cost of the product 1%. But perhaps it dramatically lowers returns and/or customer support issues and the company saves 10% overall. Excellent ROI which the invisible hand will nibble away leaving us all with cheaper, if talkative, crappy furinture.

  • So now the same cheap, particle-board, crappy furniture will cost 3 times as much because of all this hardware that assumes I'm an idiot. I guess the purchase price already proved that.... This is right along with today's current RF ID technology. $2 per tag to track a $3 box of widgets. Makes good sense....
  • ... is for swingsets and bicycles and all of that other "some assembly required" crap with miserably translated confusing manuals. Think of all of the heartache it would save on Christmas Eve!!!

    - Freed

    • The other option is to stop manufacturing these things in other countries, although you'd be trading the cheapness of labour for the clarity of the manuals ... which do you prefer?
      • The other option is to stop manufacturing these things in other countries, although you'd be trading the cheapness of labour for the clarity of the manuals ... which do you prefer?

        I haven't found the clarity of instructions from American produced items any better than that of European or Asian produced items. In fact, I've frequently found that European-produced goods have better instructions than their American counterparts.

        I think the presence of such microchips isn't a bad idea at all.

    • Re:What they really need this for... (Score:5, Funny)

      by liquidsin ( 398151 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @12:36PM (#4200637) Homepage
      ...miserably translated confusing manuals.

      Think hard. Is that what you *really* want? Instead of reading things like "tire now to be inserted where forks make vee-shape" do you want the bike saying it to you? I think I'd be laughing too hard to build a bicycle that kept telling me "All your training wheel are belong to back tire. For great justice, insert all handle-bar tassle." Maybe it's just me though...

    • My biggest complaint is figuring our how to take toys out of the box in the first place. Get a chainsaw to cut through the sealed plastic casing, undo 30 twist ties, find the 3 hidden screws, and finally cut the 10 feet of mailing tape wrapped around it.

      I'm exaggerating a little here, but last year a bought a couple toy cars, about twice as big as a Matchbox, and not only did it have two twist ties running through the body, but it was SCREWED to a piece of cardboard with really tiny screws and really big washers! I had to go dig out my mini screwdriver set for a small toy car! Then I ended up stripping the screws anyways. I finally ended up just breaking the screws out of the plastic with a pair of pliers.
  • I wonder if it they sell a slightly beligerant(sp?) model?

    "Yeah, I guess that goes there. IF YOU WANT TO BUILD IT WRONG! My god, you're dumber than the screwdriver you're currently holding wrong. I think I just saw the special olympics run by outside, go grab one of those kids and have him do it. And for the last friggin time THEIR ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SCREWS LEFT OVER. Quit thinking I threw extras in the back, dumbass."

  • Wait for it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by fobbman ( 131816 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @12:27PM (#4200573) Homepage
    How long before we see the /. article about someone getting the Linux kernel to boot in his futon?

  • Okay, so cheap unassembled pulpwood laminated in plastic is overpriced. But wait, it has microprocessors embedded to help you assemble it.

    Is that all? Not on your life!

    Don't write that check just yet. We'll include a free set of batteries for all twelve embedded processors.

    NOW how much would you over-pay?

    If you call in the next five minutes, we'll even throw in a piezo speaker which will tell you in five languages just how stupid you are when you try to assemble the bookshelf backwards!

    <sing>Come on down to Psuedo-Dane, where you know the Prices are Insane!</sing>

  • I dunno. If the instructions (even if sparse) aren't enough, maybe Ikea isn't the place for you.

    I thought the whole point of DIY or unfinished furniture was to lower the overall price.. This sounds like something gimmicky to jack it up.
  • Is it just me, or is this meglomatic overkill? I mean, you know whether a chair is assembled correctly or not. Does it look like a chair? Does it support weight? Then you've done an a-ok job by my standards.
  • Gotta wonder what the power source is gonna be. I mean honestly, if you have to plug the parts in during installation... that'd be one hell of a big power strip to deliver the 2 Amps for the chair.

    Or, I could just imagine the packaging:

    "Batteries not included"

    Hell, finding the place to insert them would prolly take longer then putting the thing together.

    But at least when it was done, those nifty green lights all over would be pretty welcoming...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • warn you if you are doing something wrong or dangerous.

    "Your honor, the plaintiff suffered severe injuries to his hand and fingers when the defendants product failed to warn him of swinging the hammer at that velocity in such close proximity to his hand."

  • What a 'Distraction' (Score:3, Informative)

    by Snafoo ( 38566 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @12:28PM (#4200583) Homepage
    This has, of course, already been prefigured in sci fi; someone at that company has been reading Bruce Sterling [amazon.com].
  • ...yell and fight the packer if they try and ship it without all it's screws?

    And if so will MFI (My Furniture is Incomplete) change their name?
  • ...a beowolf cluster of your furniture. ...sorry :)

    Ciao,
    Klaus
  • When they catch wind of this, the people at Ikea are going to be pissed...

  • What about chairs that.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <ieshan@@@gmail...com> on Thursday September 05, 2002 @12:29PM (#4200590) Homepage Journal
    What about chairs that scream alerts when we've been sitting in them for too long?

    "GO OUT AND DO SOMETHING USEFUL INSTEAD OF SITTING IN AND READING SLASHDOT!"

    "HOW WOULD YOU LIKE IT IF A 300 POUND GUY SAT ON YOU ALL DAY." ...etc, etc. =P
  • I can hear the calls now to IKEA's support line.
    "Yeah, I bought this bookshelf like 2 year's ago. I just put a copy of Microserfs on it and it won't stop beeping!"
  • In my experiance with this cheap easily assembled furnature, the biggest problem is the instruction manual. Usually it's some horrible job done at the last minute, then translated into English by somebody's kid who's just finished English 101. Often times the instructions are just plain wrong (presumably due to design changes made to the piece after the manual was written). Fortunatly, almost all of this furnature has the same basic instructions:
    1. put all of the little lockbolt things in the little holes.
    2. Put all of the big cam things into the big holes
    3. Stick all of the parts together and twist the cams until they stop.

    It's not rocket science, but I'd still like a manual that was at least partially understandable.

  • Sounds familiar... (Score:2, Informative)

    by mahlen ( 6997 )

    This sounds an awful lot like the building materials that told people (vocally, not via screen) how to assemble them into a building from Bruce Sterling's novel Distraction [amazon.com]. Don't need skilled labor if the bricks tell you what to do. Very interesting to see this in the real world.

    mahlen

    I defend myself by saying that, although this seemed immoral to me, it also seemed as though it wouldn't ever work anyway. --Fred Pohl, "The Coming of the Quantum Cats", ca. 1985

  • built-in microprocessors that could relieve the confusion, anger and frustration of putting them together.


    Relieve the confusion, anger, and frustration?

    "Now now... I know this is hard... you're going through a tough time, I know. Just close your eyes and count till 10... ok? Now take a deep breath and this time hit the nail with the hammer, not your thumb. You're doing a good job!"

  • it's annoying enough (Score:3, Funny)

    by Treeluvinhippy ( 545814 ) <liquidsorcery@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Thursday September 05, 2002 @12:40PM (#4200665)
    with the missus giving helpful advice. Now I have to listen to the actual piece of furniture I'm assembiling?

  • The system can suggest the next most appropriate action at any point in time

    Couch: It looks like you smacked your thumb with a hammer. Would you like to:

    1)Swear in your native language?

    2)Kick something?

    3)Dial a friend to come over and laugh at you?
  • Me: "Insert tab A into slot C..."
    Bookshelf 2000: "I'm sorry Dave, but I can't let you do that" BZZZZZAAPPP!
  • I fondly remember the first apartment my wife and I occupied. We needed furnishings in quantity, and were pretty broke, so we did the usual thing for our neck of the woods: we head out to Ikea [ikea-usa.com] and snagged as much cheap stuff as we good.

    We discovered an interesting thing that evening: the more difficult to assemble pieces usually have the more gutteral names. Which is convenient, because when you're screaming it in frustration, it's more satisfying. For example, when I torqued my hand on a hex wrench trying to assemble a "sverker" shelving unit, I spent a good minute and a half shouting, "Goddamn sverking sverk of a sverker!"

    With this technology, I don't really expect this phenomenon to go away:

    Me: Okay, lemmee see here. Almost got it...
    (Electronic Female Swede): Warning. You are now applying excessive pressure to the hex wrench. Bodily injuy may result if cont...
    Me: OWW! Sverking son of a sverk!
    EFS: Hey, I warned you, asshole.
  • I can't wait for the addendums:
    Interlock lights 25 thru 38 will flash when being assembled correctly and stay steady when assembled incorrectly.

    Please ignore interlock lights 7, 15, 18, and 29 as their behavior is erroneous.

    During assembly, interlock 83 will blink three times then remain off. Please monitor interlock 83 to make sure this happens.

    If interlock 122 begins blinking at any time after assembly, please disassemble interlocks 1, 2, 5, and 8 thru 122.

  • This idea reminds me of a concept from Distraction, by Bruce Sterling. Computers were cheap enough to embedded in disposable pieces of sticky tape.
    One application was building construction- grab a bunch of appropriate materials, attach a CPU to each piece, and they'll begin to network together and exchange blueprints. The human builders who fit things together can be completely unskilled, because everytime someone picks up a piece, it transmits instructions to his headset telling him where it needs to be stuck in relation to all the other chunks.

    This story seems to be the same idea, but on a smaller and non-self-organizing scale.

  • Wow! Imagine a Sauder [sauder.com] cluster of these!
  • Just because we can stick chips into everything doesn't mean we should. I think is a good example of how starved for ideas we have become. I mean, this, along with "networked toasters" and "microwaves that download recipies from the internet." Have people gone nuts?

    Here I am waiting for hydrogen cars and holodecks, what I get are talking furniture parts. Screw you guys.

    • ... but doesn't it strike you as a wee bit unsettling if furniture is designed so that mis-assembly can be "dangerous" in the first place??!

      I can hear it now: "Dave, if you don't screw my leg in correctly, I'm going to come loose and stab you up the arse!"

      [Dave grabs chainsaw and applies it smartly to the chair]

  • after all, they make all that stylish-but-cheap pine furniture that you have to put together once you return home from Ikea.

    I either praise those clever Swedish designers or curse them as dirty little reindeer eaters.

  • How about just making assembly easier? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @12:51PM (#4200752) Homepage Journal
    Instead of inflating the price of the products, how about the companies spend that excess money on making the product easier to assemble?
    Most of the time, its just improving the instruction manual. Instead of hiring a tech company to put all this technology in, how about you just hire a few good writers to make a nice and easy to understand manual?

    Sheesh
    • Or use computers, for that matter. As far as I can tell, this thing was designed to help dumb people build things that are too complex for them to build in the first place.

      I recently bought a large and complex second-hand desk that was unassembled. I deduced how it goes together, and I assembled it myself. Two parts were missing. I contacted the manufacturer, who was kind enough to ship them to me free of charge all the way from Quebec. The even shipped me a manual so I could verify how it goes together.

      All this new technology will do is further confuse the dumb people, and insult the intelligence of people who know how figure it out. After 4 years with a computer, my boss still asks me how to save attachments in her outlook express, or how to scan and save documents. Things like computer interfaces or "Peg A goes into slot B" technologies have reached the limit of simplification. There is some technology that can't (and shouldn't) be made simpler. The only thing my boss (and dumb people trying to assemble things) would benefit more from is if someone did the work for them.

      The money and effort spent on this new technology would be better served if the company started shipping pre-built furniture.
  • How about a little easter egg built, so whenever 260lbs of weight are applied, the chair says "hey lardass, time to take a diet - you're killin' my joints here."

    Of course, this would never go through, but there are other interesting possibilities with weight-sensors and perhaps people on diets...

  • Overheard... (Score:5, Funny)

    by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @12:54PM (#4200773) Homepage
    Overheard whilst trying to assemble a (Zero) Wing Chair:

    "HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN."
    "Uhh...fine?"
    "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US."
    "Lesse...um...base...base...Ah! Here it is. OK, do I attach the Main Column (E) to the Base (A)?"
    "YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DOING."
    "Great...OK...now I put the Main Screen (F) here...and the Zigs (M) go...here?"
    "MOVE ZIG."
    "Oh...here?"
    "MOVE ZIG."
    "Umm...er...here?"
    "TAKE OFF EVERY ZIG."
    "No, wait! It goes here, right? Or here?"
    "SOMEONE SET UP US THE BOMB."
    "Oh, c'mon, It's not that screwed up. Just lemme get my drill...and a hot glue gun..."
    "HA HA HA HA."

  • If anything, wouldn't the Swedes, who brought us Ikea, have come up with this?
    • FWIW, the research is at Zurich's ETH (one of the country's 2 technical universities - the other is in Lausanne - with a long record of work in IT (Wirth, of Pascal, Modula, and Oberon fame presided there for many years)). Ikea has several stores in Switzerland, with the largest just a few miles along a motorway near Zurich, and their cheap & cheerful flatpack products are undoubtedly pretty popular with people of research-student age. I imagine that when the researchers were looking for something that was easily-obtainable, cheap, robust, and of the right sort of size and complexity for their research, flat-pack furniture was an obvious choice. (Being able to put some of your research materials to practical use at home later would be a useful bonus, of course;)

      It may just possibly be relevant that one of the other big furniture retailers in the Zurich area has been running a series of ads on local TV for several months promoting its full service offering: short vignettes showing young couples manhandling heavy furniture up narrow stairways, or failing to find the right bolt to fix a shelf the other is holding up, etc, with tag lines like "XYZ Furniture: we deliver it, too" or "we assemble it, too". (I believe that even the local Ikea stores are now offering delivery and installation services, though I doubt that many customers take them up on it.)

      Research aside, I would have thought that adequately labelling the components of the furniture should be enough: eg stencil an "A" on tab-A and next to the slot-B that it must fit into in a place that won't be visible when everything is put together. Put removable numbered stickers on the parts showing the order that you should deal with them, matching up with the numbered diagrams in the assembly instructions. Maybe even print some brief textual instructions to supplement the pictures. It's unlikely that many slashdot readers are likely to have trouble assembling the products, but before consigning the assembly-challenged to the ranks of the terminally stupid, please bear in mind that not everyone has the same ability to visualise the construction in advance, even with the help of step by step pictures, and this is, I think, the main factor in how easy or difficult people find it to work with these products.

      KARMA: Shaky (mainly affected by a missing nut in the assembly kit)

      • Thank you for the response. I'd intended it tongue in cheek, but you've made some solid points. Despite the "gee whiz" factor of processors assisting assembly, I agree that the effort would be better spent in writting better instructions in the first place.

        Here's a thought: How 'bout suplementing the hard copy with animated instructions showing how the pieces fit, either on a website, or on a CD or even DVD included in the package? (For cost purposes, though, a flash movie on the website might be best). Understood that you're making some basic assumptions about the technical savvy of your customer (has and uses DVD/PC) but it might still have *some* utility.

        Hmmm... I think I'll add a new post just for that.


  • Surely this isn't really being funded by Switzerland, it must be Sweden [ikea.com]. After all, modular furniture is their major export, isn't it?

  • WHY must we coddle the stupid??? (Score:3, Funny)

    by phillymjs ( 234426 ) <slashdot AT stango DOT org> on Thursday September 05, 2002 @01:12PM (#4200872) Homepage Journal
    If you can't figure out how to assemble IKEA furniture, I mean.... ugh! You should not have made it to adulthood, you should clearly have already died in some horrific Lego set assembly accident as a youth.

    Idiots of the world: Here's a plan. If you're too fucking dumb to insert Tab A into Slot B yourself, then YOU hire someone to do it, and YOU incur the extra cost. Don't complain until they have to start making furniture that coaxes you through assembling it, thus jacking the price up for everyone including the intelligent people like me who can and will read and follow instructions.

    This is further evidence that all that time I spent in search of knowledge in my younger days was wasted. I should have just spent it drinking beer, eating pork rinds, watching pro wrestling, NASCAR, and tractor pulls on TV like everyone else, and waiting for society to mold itself to my needs as a complete buffoon.

    Hmm... maybe I can fix things myself....

    /me looks around for a crayon and a mallet. [thesimpsons.com]

    ~Philly
    • "If you're too fucking dumb to insert Tab A into Slot B yourself, then YOU hire someone to do it, and YOU incur the extra cost."

      Slow down there chief. If it's too hard to put something like furniture together, then it's poorly designed. Anybody remember that episode of Married with Children where Al and Jefferson were trying to assemble a work bench? They were confused because they had more 'seven shaped' brackets than 'L shaped' brackets.

      Al and Jefferson aren't very bright, but there's some hints there that the workbench wasn't designed that well in the first place. The damn thing looked like an erector set! The first mistake in designing something like that is having too many different pieces that look similar. The next big mistake is making them so that they sort of work. Ever put a screw that was too small into a hole, only to have it sort of fit? Ever tried finding that screw when you had one that definitely didn't fit?

      I hate my laptop because it uses screws of 3 (three) different sizes. Why do they need all the different sizes? Why couldn't they use one size of screw and be done with it? I'm sure there are internal reasons, but I don't feel like performing different permutations with 12 different screws.

      However, Toshiba did something right with this laptop. Each screw hole (shaddup Beavis) has a number by it. Examples (B-4, B-6, B-8, B-10) After a little experimentation, I realized what those numbers ment. B-4 was the tiniest screw, which was probably 4mm long. B-10 was the longest one, about a centimeter long. After discovering that, I realized that Toshiba compensated for their bad design! Seeing as how only authorized technicians are supposed to work on the machine *sheepish grin*, that made sense. Good choice on Tosihiba's part!

      Furniture has little excuse for being hard to assemble. Even PCs, which are far more complicated, make it virtually impossible to plug something in the wrong place. That's called good design.

      In any case, the summary of my point is that difficulty isn't a matter of intelligence, it's a matter of design.

  • Technology for technology's sake (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tmark ( 230091 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @01:17PM (#4200911)
    Come on. Furniture that comes flat-packed is almost always so easy to install the instructions rarely even contain WORDS, just pictures. How much work are these microprocessors going to save me if the full installation instructuions consist of 4 or 5 pictures, and the only tool I need is a hex-driver ?
  • Sounds useless in its current incarnation, but imagine this:

    Customer to furniture: "I need the TV section 3 inceh wider"
    Furniture: "You will need a 3/16" drill bit, and a measuring tape to complete the modofication"
    Instructions follow....

    Or... as is(at least used to be) so common, you are missing some bit that is essential to contruction. You can point to the missing piece on some pressure sensitive photo of parts, and the computer will automatically call-up the store and order the missing bits for you. You don't have to try explaining what you need to a person "The long brown screw with the stop sign hole at the top. It's a little longer than the door handle on the glass and shorter than the crosspiece at the shelf support"

  • Other than assembly, what other use could you have for embedding a processor in furniture?
    • A router built into a computer desk.
    • An armchair with wireless IR/802.11 links for wireless digital headphones.
    • Lamps with an IP address for a remote dimming/lighting service. (Discussed previously on /.)
    Any other ideas anyone? Anyone?

  • and it will only take minutes..... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @01:27PM (#4200960) Homepage
    before the marketing department realizes that they can sell AD space on the things... Just think...

    "While you are assembling subassembly B.... wouldn't this be more fun with a Pepsi? Or better yet Dominoes Pizza is great during furniture assembly"

    or

    "Warning: the structure is unstable this way... Band-Aid brand medical bandages will help protect those wounds"
  • Sure, the furniture will talk to me when I forgot to insert "tab a" into "slot b", but will it scream in agony after I smash my thumb with a hammer?

  • .
    This is a classic (or soon to be) example of abuse of technology.

    Of all of the means available for 'instruction' for assembly available
    (12 language pidgen printed manuals, unpictable pictograms, VHS tapes,
    CDROMs, Online webpages, 8/900# telephone help lines, and pdf versions),
    this one makes my skin crawl.

    Now if they could apply it to refolding a roadmap, maybe I could tolerate it.
    One more backseat driver, in the car probably wouldn't phase me.
    .
  • New wooden dowel insert detected, please reboot night table for changes to take affect.
  • ...for stupid people.
  • If they'd just put more labels on the tabs, or color-code them it'd be far more effective. So, where do the batteries go? Besides, who wants to pay for extra electronic components that are only going to be used once? I bet this would raise the price of furniture at least $10. This sounds like another over-application of technology for technology's sake. Nice try, but this looks like another research project not thinking about practicality.
  • Did any of you ever play the Sierra game "Torin's Passage?" It was designed by Al Lowe..


    Anyways, there is a scene in the game where Torin must cross a slippery, grassy area. And the grass talks to you while you move your cursor to select where Torin should jump. When it's in the wrong spot, shrill, high-pitched, annoyingly LOUD voices shriek at you saying:


    "Nope! Not Here! No Way! Nope! Unh-uh"


    If I had to hear that while trying to assemble a computer desk or an entertainment center or something, I'd probably use the tools included to stab out my ear drums.

  • Why is this classed as science? It's not science. It's technology.
  • A little perspective for those doing all the bitching:
    • First of all, this is a PhD project, not a product in development.
    • Second, use your imaginations - just because it's demonstrated on Ikea furniture doesn't restrict it to that. Ikea furniture is designed to be
      1. compact to ship, and
      2. easy to assemble.
      Having some sort of assembly assistance could relax the latter requirement and enable more complicated DIY products. Or they could be used for faster training of assembly-line workers. If I get any more ideas, I may have to start charging consulting fees.

    On to my subject: There's a 116 MB video [vision.ethz.ch] on their site. I downloaded the whole thing at work (way fast) and watched it (about 5 minutes or so). It's pretty deadpan, and shows a guy putting together an Ikea Pax armoire unit. (It just so happens that I have three of these myself. They're pretty straight-forward to assemble, just quite heavy at 50 kilos per unit, not including doors or shelves.) There's also footage of the developer discussing how his ideas work, with some overlays of accelerometer output and the like. The clip ends with the builder standing proudly next to the completed armoire, as the image fades to black. After a short pause, there is a loud crash, so I think these guys had a sense of humor about their project.

  • Wrigley announced they are putting microchips in sticks of gum to warn if you are doing something dangerous, like walking.
  • The good news is, your furniture is now programmed to tell you how to build it.

    The problem is, you have one of three options.

    1) Listen to the instructions in Japanese

    2) Listen to very broken English mushmouthed by a Swede "Fronken A, B tab slot do in be putting. Shmicken C Swivel Trocker B connect do be."

    3) Destroying the microprocessors with a very large ball peen hammer.

  • Imagine a beowulf cluster of these! (Ie. My Living Room!)

  • Why does the idea of "microprocessors" sound like overkill in this sense?

    Couldn't a few transistors and some LEDs serve the same purpose at a tiny fraction of the cost?

    Or couldn't furniture companies hire more proficent people to write and translate assembley instructions, draw understandable diagrams, or number/color-code parts. Quite low-tech, but also quite efficent and useful...

  • I've met people who should not own a hammer, who use one anway. They manage to get their pictures hung, but anyone who knows how to use a hammer laughs at the attempt. This is for something simple. They should not put furnature togather, they should buy it assembled.

    Note that these people are not stupid, just they have no mechanical skills. Several have honestly (well, as honest as lawyers can be anyway) earned several million dollars.

    If you can't handle mechanical things, no problem. There are plenty of people who can be hired to do that for you. I can't do a very good job of cutting hair, but I hire that done. Nor am I a very good lawyer, doctor, writer, dog trainer. No problem, I recignise my limits, and choose what I do. I could be some of the above, but I can't learn all of the above, so I hire experts. (In fact I have hired, or plan to hire all of the above mentioned experts)

  • And I quote:
    By attaching computing devices and multiple sensors onto different parts of the assembly the system can recognize the actions of the user and determine the current state of the assembly. The system can suggest the next most appropriate action at any point in time.

    Unimaginative computer geeks!
  • warn you if you are doing something ... dangerous

    "Please stop. It is not safe to throw this kit out the window, as it may hit someone below."
  • As has been pointed out, the most cost effective answer to this problem is better written instructions and/or simpler designs. But if you still want to toss technology at the problem...

    Here's a thought: How 'bout suplementing the hard copy with animated instructions showing how the pieces fit, either on a website, or on a CD or even DVD included in the package? (For cost purposes, though, a flash movie on the website might be best). Understood that you're making some basic assumptions about the technical savvy of your customer (has and uses DVD/PC) but it might still have *some* utility.

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