AWARD MERL Team Wins IROS 2026 Humanoid IKEA Assembly Challenge
Date released: October 9, 2026
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AWARD MERL Team Wins IROS 2026 Humanoid IKEA Assembly Challenge Date:
October 1, 2026
Awarded to:
Kei Suzuki, Jing Liu, Alexander Schperberg, Toshiaki Koike-Akino, Ye Wang, Harsh Singh, Chak Lam Shek, Maxwell Asselmeier, and Haodi Hu
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Description:
MERL's team MEL-Craft won first place in the Humanoid IKEA Assembly Challenge at IROS 2026, held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The inaugural competition attracted approximately 34 registered teams worldwide.
The challenge asked teams to develop autonomous robot policies for a Unitree G1 humanoid robot to assemble an IKEA UTTER table from its component parts. The robot had to perform the task autonomously at the competition venue, requiring capabilities including perception, bimanual manipulation, spatial reasoning, planning, and control. Human intervention was penalized, and teams were evaluated based on assembly progress and completion time.
MERL competed as MEL-Craft and achieved first place in the competition. The result demonstrates progress toward reliable humanoid robots capable of performing complex, contact-rich manipulation tasks in real-world environments, an important direction for physical AI and general-purpose robotic systems.
The MERL team members were Kei Suzuki, Jing Liu, Alexander Schperberg, Toshiaki Koike-Akino, and Ye Wang, with contributions from MERL interns Harsh Singh, Chak Lam Shek, Maxwell Asselmeier, and Haodi Hu.
The Humanoid IKEA Assembly Challenge was held as part of IROS 2026, the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. -
MERL Contacts:
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External Link:
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Research Areas:
Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Control, Machine Learning, Optimization, Robotics, Signal Processing
