If there’s any company on earth with an expertise in designing things that are easy to transport and assemble, it’s Ikea. So it makes perfect sense that the Swedish furniture manufacturer would team up with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees—or the UNCHR for short—to redesign the temporary shelters that millions of refugees around the world call home.
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Realizing that kids who grow up playing with Ikea furniture probably turn into college students and adults who buy Ikea furniture, the Swedish manufacturer is going to start producing dollhouse-sized versions of its more iconic pieces, including the Lack table and the Expedit shelving.
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Assembling that new cabinet or entertainment center can be a real pain in the butt. Mostly because you need an extra pair of arms. It helps if you are an octopus. If you are tired of assembling IKEA furniture, researchers have created a new robot to help.
This robot uses a force sensor and a vision-tracking system to learn how a user wants it to move. Then the robot basically becomes an extra pair of hands to help you with the task at hand. The robot moves freely when the user tugs on a table top and can become stiff as a person screws in the legs.
So it isn’t just an extra pair of hands, but a pair that knows what they are doing. Take that IKEA. Now can you explain where this extra screw was supposed to go?
[via Livescience & IEEE Spectrum]
I know, I know, IKEA furniture is supposed to be so easy to assemble, and in the long run, it also helps you lower the total cost of ownership especially when you want to refurbish your home with an entire set of furniture. For those of us who feel that DIY is not our cup of tea, then paying IKEA a small fee to have their staff assemble your newly purchase flat packed furniture is a good idea, but for other folks who simply cannot afford such an expenditure and are forced to assemble the furniture yourself, you might run into issues from time to time as you try to figure out just which screw goes in where.
Fret not, other than having a teenager around (who is infinitely useful when it comes to assembly instructions, thanks to their quick minds), there is also an alternative to help you out – in the form of a robot, of course. Italian researchers have demonstrated how their robot managed to assist them in building an IKEA table, thanks to the help of a force sensor and a vision tracking system in the robot itself. Still no substitute for a human though.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Robot Programmed To Help In Building IKEA Furniture, Ray Charles Robot Caught Performing In Japan, 
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IKEA tries to make it very simple for customers to assemble their own furniture. All of it comes with instructions, and if those are followed to the letter, then assembling furniture wouldn’t be complicated at all. However, this robot lends an extra hand and can be of immense help. Who thought putting together furniture could be so high-tech?
Italian researchers programmed a robot so that it could help them in putting together a table from IKEA. The robot was taught through a process, which is called kinesthetic teaching. In this process the robot uses its vision tracking system and a force sensor to learn whatever movements that are being taught to it. The video shows us how the robot first aids the builder by flipping over the tabletop, then automatically stiffens so that the builder can easily screw in the legs of the table. The robot also has compliant behavior, it moves accordingly with the movements of the builder. Obviously the robot is not a mainstream product that you can order for IKEA building nirvana, but it definitely shows us the many household applications of a programmable robot.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Robot Helps You Assemble IKEA Furniture, Ray Charles Robot Caught Performing In Japan, 
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The real thing that’s frustrating about building IKEA furniture isn’t the little screws or the instructions. It’s the person who’s helping you. They misunderstand directions, hum Rihanna songs and kick the last dowel under the refrigerator by accident. And you can’t say anything because they’re doing you a favor. More »
One thing that’s great about IKEA furniture is that it’s so cheap that you can feel comfortable hacking it into other forms without fear of damaging your grandma’s prized antique Chippendale. Take, for example, this epic IKEA hack, which transformed a couple of ordinary stools into a functional kid’s bicycle.
With the help of FabShop, Samuel Bernier and Andreas Bhend took parts from a couple of $15 FROSTA birch plywood stools, along with a handful of 3D printed parts, and fabricated a bicycle out of them. While using some 3D printed parts might be looked at as “cheating” by some, I think it just gave their design a minor boost, and the bike still captures the spirit of the original furniture upon which it’s based.
Bernier and Bhend get bonus points for creating a fake IKEA instruction manual to go with their design too. They called the bike the “Draisienne“, named after an antique bicycle, but I would have gone with more of an IKEA friendly name like “BIKKLO” or “KICKLA.”
If you’re interested in building your own IKEA bike, head on over to Instructables for the build details.
[via FastCo Design via Cheezburger]
Ikea’s furniture isn’t just cheap and easy to transport, it’s easy to hack too, with sites like Ikea Hackers showcasing some of the best modifications. But none can top this hack by Andreas Bhend and Samuel N. Bernier that converts a couple of Ikea Frosta stools into a pedal-less bike—or draisienne if you really want to get technical. More »
Cheap people of Australia: run! Don’t walk! To the nearest location where you can get pregnant. Ikea is doling out free cribs to babies born nine months from today. More »
If you’re like me, you probably spend way too much time staring at a computer screen. There are some ways to reduce eyestrain, but I have to say that using IKEA’s Dioder LED light strips is one of the most effective since it’s kind of a low-tech, low-cost way of hacking your monitor into a Philips Ambilight.
IKEA Hacker Skipernicus did this, by mounting the $30 Dioder lights on the back of his monitor. He used an Ergotron arm to prop his monitor up, but this should work with any type of monitor, including HDTVs. He also Velcroed the controller the back of the monitor, for easy access, and zip-ties were used to connect the wiring to the monitor arm.
While they won’t match the on-screen colors like an actual Ambilight, the Dioder strips can cycle through colors, and the the backlighting can reduce eyestrain, which is definitely a plus.
And for those of you who are more electronically-inclined, there actually is a color-matching hack available here.
[via Ikeahackers]
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