THE IKEA generation know the score. You buy some flat-packed furniture, ignore or lose the instructions, then lash the thing together with a growing sense of frustration that culminates in blind rage.
But that could become a thing of the past, if Stavros Antifakos gets his way. He has built a flat-pack kit whose parts are fitted with cheap microprocessors that monitor what you鈥檙e doing during assembly and warn you if you鈥檙e doing something wrong or dangerous.
Antifakos and his colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have found 44 different paths that someone working without the instructions can take to fit the pieces of an IKEA wardrobe together, only eight of which result in a safe construction. Other paths lead to something that looks stable, but isn鈥檛, or come to a dead end.
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While IKEA鈥檚 instruction sheets lead to a safely constructed unit, Antifakos thinks that the order in which parts should be assembled often seems arbitrary to the buyer. 鈥淧eople find this annoying so they don鈥檛 follow them,鈥� he says. Later this month, at a conference in Sweden, he鈥檒l describe his team鈥檚 alternative approach.
They鈥檝e fixed movement and pressure sensors to the six pieces that make up the sides of an IKEA wardrobe. The sensors feed data into a battery-powered microchip built into one of the pieces. This works out where all the pieces are in relation to each other and generates instructions, tips and warnings that appear on a separate computer screen, which is connected over a wireless link.
Eventually, the team hope to build small, cheap LED-based displays into the parts. So for instance, a steady light could tell you which piece to fit next, or a flashing light could warn you that you鈥檙e trying to force-fit the wrong one.
To make sure the 鈥渃lever鈥� flat-pack doesn鈥檛 waste its batteries on the shop shelves, the sensors, microchips and LEDs will be light-activated, so there鈥檚 no power drain until the pieces are out of the box. And the technology isn鈥檛 stopping at the flat-pack. Antifakos has also fitted screwdrivers with sensors so the system knows if screws are being over-tightened, for instance.
The team hopes that self-assembly items like tents could one day come with these embedded assembly aids. But until then, you鈥檒l just have to read the instructions.