Reuters reports that Robots in Singapore have completed a task many humans dread - assembling flat-packed Ikea furniture. Sifting through pages of instructions and a jumble of screws and bolts to build the low-cost Swedish furniture may soon be a thing of the past given advances in technology, say researchers at the city-state’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU). The scientists spent three years programming the robot - made of arms, grippers, sensors and 3D cameras - which assembled the frame of an Ikea dining chair in around 20 minutes.

They say it may not be long before such robots can fully assemble a piece of furniture from a manual, verbal instruction or by just looking at an image of the finished item.