An experimental multisensorial robotic system for disassembly automation

Disassembly and recycling are becoming increasingly important in our society, especially for their ecological implications. In this paper the authors present an approach to disassembly problems, which is essentially based on the concepts of multisensory integration and fusion and on the use of purposive actions to simplify perceptual tasks. The authors present a robotic system for the recognition and sorting of individual objects from a group, operations that are extremely important in most disassembly tasks. An example application of the system is described and experimental results are discussed. The effectiveness of the system in operating in a partially structured environment, shows how problems which are difficult to manage by using a single sensory modality can be solved by integrating multisensory data