A robot assistant for unscrewing in hybrid human-robot disassembly

The disassembly of end-of-life products has thus far seen minimal industrial application of robotics, aside from manufacturers initiatives to refurbish their own products. Conventional robotics in manufacturing lacks the flexibility to deal with the expected small lot sizes, product deviations and failed operations due to product damage. Disassembly systems not owned by manufacturers need to be readily adaptable to new designs on the market without access to the manufacturers´ product information. We present a concept and initial investigations regarding a hybrid disassembly work station with a compliant robot for the task of unscrewing. A novel design for a bit-changing mechanism without external actuation allows the robot to use commonly-available socket wrench bits. The simplicity and easy extensibility of the tooling, an independence from vision systems, and the ability to intuitively teach the robot new positions for the application of skills, opens a potential for a future robot assistant that is easily reconfigured and can be integrated into manual disassembly facilities with minimal additional requirements for skilled labour.