Design of a Flexible Disassembly Cell Based on Human–Robot Collaboration for End-of-Life Electric Vehicle Batteries
摘要
Flexibility is important to the autonomous disassembly of End-of-Life (EoL) Electric Vehicle (EV) batteries due to the uncertainties in frequency, quantity, and quality, and unpredictability in disassembly operations. Human–robot collaborative disassembly as a flexible semi-automated approach has been increasingly investigated by combining the advantages of robots with human operators. This chapter first provides a short literature review of the automated disassembly of EV batteries and the human–robot collaborative disassembly of EoL products. It then presents the design of a flexible disassembly cell for EoL EV batteries that exploits strategies and technologies such as Human–Robot Collaboration (HRC), machine vision, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and automatic tool-changing. A case study was carried out, which involved the screws dismantling in an EV battery by a collaborative robot working with a human operator, to demonstrate the feasibility of the designed flexible disassembly cell.