The lab has designed an easily reconfigurable room, the size of a cramped studio, to be the staging ground for all 14 apartment variations. It has also re-created identical virtual replicas in Unity, a popular video-game engine--as well as 75 other configurations--that have all been open-sourced online. Together, these 89 total configurations will offer realistic simulation environments for teams around the world to train and test their navigation algorithms. The environments also come pre-loaded with models of AI2's robots and mirror real-world physics like gravity and light reflections as closely as possible.

When you look at the changes Swedish furniture giant IKEA is implementing in its operations, it's clear that they aren't satisfied with the status quo. In fact, they are making some moves to make their business more attractive to consumers in the digital age with services and products that are designed to match the lifestyles and needs of consumers in the future. While many of these actions are in preliminary stages, they do indicate IKEA is transforming into a tech company. One of the joys (OK, absolute frustrations) of IKEA furniture is the DIY assembly. When IKEA acquired TaskRabbit, a platform that allows consumers to connect to individuals who will assemble their IKEA furniture, it gave its customers a way to avoid the DIY trauma.

The robot described above, if properly equipped, could tackle other industrial tasks, such as drilling, glue dispensing and inspection, Suarez-Ruiz said. The research team is now trying to make the robot capable of bonding glass and drilling holes through metal -- skills that could be useful in the automotive and aircraft industries.

COMPUTERS have already proved better than people at playing chess and diagnosing diseases. But now a group of artificial-intelligence researchers in Singapore have managed to teach industrial robots to assemble an IKEA chair--for the first time uniting the worlds of Allen keys and Alan Turing. Now that machines have mastered one of the most baffling ways of spending a Saturday afternoon, can it be long before AIs rise up and enslave human beings in the silicon mines? The research also holds a serious message. It highlights a deep truth about the limitations of automation.

It is the cause of countless marital rows over mislaid allen keys and baffling instructions. But while trying to build Ikea furniture can ruin a weekend for many couples, the robots at least have got it sussed. Robots can build an Ikea chair in under nine minutes, mechanical engineers have discovered, after being programmed to fit the parts together perfectly. People, according to Ikea, take 10 to 15 minutes on average to build the same item of furniture. Robots can build an Ikea chair in under nine minutes, mechanical engineers have discovered, after being programmed to fit the parts together perfectly.

The "smart home" has not yet distinguished itself. Sure, you might dim your lights with an app; you might even talk to your large appliances. But despite years of promised ubiquity, the connected home has yet to cleave with mainstream reality. It's too expensive, too futzy, too filled with interoperability landmines. You know who can fix that?