Robotic Ease of Disassembly Metric (Re-DiM) for Flexible Cooperative Remanufacturing of Bike Batteries

The success and economic viability of remanufacturing is intrinsically linked to the efficiency of the product’s disassembly. For complex products such as bike batteries, the synergy of human and robot cooperative disassembly presents a flexible solution that integrates the benefits of both manual and robotic approaches. To assess the barriers that hinder the adoption of such flexible robotic systems for remanufacturing, a Robotic ease of Disassembly Metric (Re-DiM) is developed in the presented research. This method is applied to evaluate the technical feasibility and time efficiency for a flexible robotic disassembly system for diverse bike batteries. Based on the specifications and limitations of the cooperative disassembly system and necessary toolset under development, various criteria are defined that connectors must meet for effective robotic disassembly. Based hereon and the disassembly time estimations, the challenges of robotic disassembly are underscored for bike battery disassembly.