An experimental robot system for investigating disassembly problems

The traditional approach to automation and robotics has always been focused on assembly problems, whereas the managing of manufactured products at the end of their life cycle has been mostly neglected. However, disassembly and recycling are becoming important factors in a society like ours, which is increasingly concerned about the ecological and economical implications of manufacturing. In this paper we present a robotic system for the extraction and recognition of object agglomerates and sorting. Such operations are of crucial importance in several disassembly tasks, such as recycling and raw materials recovering. The system is based on the integration of different sensory modalities with motor actions. An example of application of the system is described and the obtained results are discussed