Several small robots cut furniture on a computer layout

The Roomba robot vacuum cleaner armed with an openwork saw and saws the tabletop under the guidance of the AI. Source: CSAIL, MIT video

Thanks to 3D printing, there was hope that in the future plastic and metal products could be made to order on an arbitrary layout, or even print at home. Successful experiments on 3D printing of residential buildings made of concrete took place . Thus, the construction and arrangement of housing for people can be almost completely automated, with the exception of one small detail - wooden furniture. Yes, there are CNC machine tools (with numerical program control), but such a large machine cannot be installed in your apartment - you need to place an order at some specialized company.

Therefore, people are still engaged in cutting boards for wooden furniture, doors and parquet right on the site of their installation. And this is a dangerous job: every year thousands of carpenters and carpenters cut off their hands and fingers , working with dangerous hand tools. Thanks to developments like the AutoSaw robotic system, these people can get rid of risky work. Like millions of their colleagues in related construction industries. Everything will be automated with the help of robots and Artificial Intelligence.


Graduate student Adriana Schulz, one of the developers of the AutoSaw automated system for sawing lumber on computer models

The AutoSaw automated system for sawing lumber using computer models was developed by a team from the Laboratory of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With the help of robots, even a novice will be able to make all the necessary furniture for an apartment: cabinets, tables, chairs, etc.

For home improvement, you need to order materials at a hardware store or sawmill, select the appropriate furniture models in the computer catalog, adjust them to the required dimensions in the computer-aided design (CAD) system - and send them to robots for sawing.



Robots will do the rest. Several mechanisms along with an auto saw specialize in cutting boards of the required size, another robot can cut flat pieces like a table top from a sheet. At the end of the work, a set of parts is obtained, which can only be joined together, if necessary, polished, impregnated and painted. So far, robots do not complete the final decoration and assembly of furniture, but it is quite a feasible task.


In the future, such robotic systems can be used not only for the manufacture of furniture parts, but also for larger-scale structures: for example, for the manufacture of a picket fence for fences in the village, boards for wooden flooring, a porch or a veranda. Maybe for the parquet.

“When you make wood flooring, you need to cut a large amount of sawn timber along the length, and this is often done on site,” said CSAIL laboratory researcher (postdoc) Jeffrey Lipton, lead author of the scientific work describing the system. “Every time you put your hand next to the saw, you are in danger.” To avoid this, we have largely automated the process using a detachable circular saw and machine saw (openwork saw). ”

The students equipped the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner to work with the openwork saw, and two portable Kuka youBot robots were used to transport the long boards and cut to size.

Computer design gives greater flexibility - it is possible to fit furniture of any shape into the most unusual interior with millimeter accuracy. For example, someone in the middle of a room in a high-rise building has a carrying column - it doesn't matter, you can fit the furniture exactly to its size, for example, by surrounding it with a table. In the kitchen, each cabinet will fit perfectly into the dimensions and curves of the walls. Or if the bed occupies a large space on the floor, then you can come up with a computer design of a multi-storey system of shelves, cabinets and steps - and raise the bed so that a lot of things fit under it. Here the project is limited only by the imagination of the designer, and the robots will make all the details as it should.

The authors of this project used the modern OnShape CAD system for design . Even a girl who has never worked in a school for a carpentry machine and did not hold a plane in her hands is capable of designing furniture, sending it to production, and then assembling a ready-made object from sawn pieces.

Scientific work (pdf) will be presented in May 2018 at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Brisbane (Australia).