AI Teaching People to Assemble Flatpack Furniture and Drones

Greetings from the School of Computing at the Australian National University, where Jiahao Zhan is explaining how videos can automatically be aligned with assembly diagrams. Anyone who has ever tried to put an Ikea flatpack together will under stand the value of this. You have a printed sheet and might even have a video demonstration, but how do they go together? Zhan's software turns the video into a set of step by step instructions. 

Zhan has spent time at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories. As it happens Mitsubishi is building frigates for the Australian navy. Robot assembly could be used to speed construction. More locally, I had a technician in my home this week, trying to work out how to replace the motor in my Mitsubishi air-conditioner. ;-)

Apart from reducing the frustration with DIY, and teaching robots to assemble, this has applications in medical procedures and maintenance of safety critical infrastructure. As an example, in the past a large team of people would spend years producing maintenance training materials for a new aircraft. However, UAVs are now being designed, built and put into use within a few months, and being constantly updated. The operator needs to be able to assemble the UAV from a kit of parts in the field. Deployment can't be held up while instructional videos are produced, but correct assembly is a matter of life and death. 

ps: The seminar also demonstrated the hybrid mode. In addition to a room full of people, there were some on Zoom. At question time it was imply a matter of switching on the audio from the remote participant, so they could ask.