Students at MIT in the US have created the IkeaBot, a robot capable of putting together Ikea furniture on its own without the help of us humans.

The first autonomous robotic system to assemble a piece of IKEA furniture, the prototype bots are so far able to assemble a Lack table without any help or instructions in around 10 minutes.

Created by Ross A. Knepper, Todd Layton, John Romanishin and Daniela Rus from MIT, the robots are not given the Ikea instructions nor are they guided through the process, but analyse the original CAD drawings for the furniture.

The robots - there can be more than one working as a team, to get the job done quicker - actually use a "geometric reasoning system" and a "symbolic planner" to figure out how the parts should be attached to one another, keeping in mind that all screw holes should be used and that no parts left over.

From there the software works out the only possible final solution using all the parts - somethimg Knepper says normally has only one final outcome.

At the moment, the robots can put together only a simple table - something that even the best humans can struggle with from Ikea - but it does present a possible future, whereby one day a visit to Ikea will include a robot building the furniture for you.

No word on when you'll be able to call one round to help in your home.