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Is this the end for flat pack hell?
Ikea will never be the same again...

By Jon Bernstein

Published: Thursday 05 September 2002

If the struggle to exit the Ikea car park isn't enough to get your blood pressure rising, the prospect of assembling that flat pack wardrobe when you finally get home is likely to send you over the edge.

Help may be at hand, however, thanks to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. The Institute doesn't promise to solve traffic nightmares but is has developed a chip that will talk DIY-haters through the art of turning flatpack into something that resembles the picture on the front of the box.

The technology - designed to be embedded into individual pieces of the furniture jigsaw - will use sensors to detect an errors as you assemble the furniture. Meanwhile, LED displays will provide on-the-job instructions.

According to a report in today's New Scientist, the Institute found that someone putting together an Ikea wardrobe could use 44 paths to completion, when only eight paths resulted in safe construction.

The scientists are currently working on ways to make the technology cheap enough to attract Ikea and co to the idea.