Robot assisted disassembly of electronic devices

Today in almost every part of our daily life we use some kind of electronic device. Among these devices are e.g, small tools used in the kitchen as well as larger devices like a TV set or a personal computer. Because of the large quantity of such end of life products, an environmentally and economically sensible way to treat this problem must be found. Especially for expensive products containing valuable modules nondestructive disassembly and the possibility to reuse some components seems to be a promising approach. The paper describes research for autonomous disassembly of standard PC hardware. A flexible robot system is realized as a complete experimental setup in our laboratory. This demonstrates achieved abilities in the fields of image analysis and extraction and processing of information for planning of actions as well as flexible control of the disassembly process