  Imagine a robot that can assemble a functional product from the individual
parts presented in any configuration to the robot. Designing such a robotic
system is a complex problem which presents several open challenges. To bypass
these challenges, the current generation of assembly systems is built with a
lot of system integration effort to provide the structure and precision
necessary for assembly. These systems are mostly responsible for part
singulation, part kitting, and part detection, which is accomplished by
intelligent system design. In this paper, we present autonomous assembly of a
gear box with minimum requirements on structure. The assembly parts are
randomly placed in a two-dimensional work environment for the robot. The
proposed system makes use of several different manipulation skills such as
sliding for grasping, in-hand manipulation, and insertion to assemble the gear
box. All these tasks are run in a closed-loop fashion using vision, tactile,
and Force-Torque (F/T) sensors. We perform extensive hardware experiments to
show the robustness of the proposed methods as well as the overall system. See
supplementary video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ9M1DQ23OI.
