Towards Reuse and Recycling of Lithium-ion Batteries: Tele-robotics for Disassembly of Electric Vehicle Batteries

Disassembly of electric vehicle batteries is a critical stage in recovery, recycling and re-use of high-value battery materials, but is complicated by limited standardisation, design complexity, compounded by uncertainty and safety issues from varying end-of-life condition. Telerobotics presents an avenue for semi-autonomous robotic disassembly that addresses these challenges. However, it is suggested that quality and realism of the user's haptic interactions with the environment is important for precise, contact-rich and safety-critical tasks. To investigate this proposition, we demonstrate the disassembly of a Nissan Leaf 2011 module stack as a basis for a comparative study between a traditional asymmetric haptic-'cobot' master-slave framework and identical master and slave cobots based on task completion time and success rate metrics. We demonstrate across a range of disassembly tasks a time reduction of 22%-57% is achieved using identical cobots, yet this improvement arises chiefly from an expanded workspace and 1:1 positional mapping, and suffers a 10-30% reduction in first attempt success rate. For unbolting and grasping, the realism of force feedback was comparatively less important than directional information encoded in the interaction, however, 1:1 force mapping strengthened environmental tactile cues for vacuum pick-and-place and contact cutting tasks.Comment: 21 pages, 12 figures, Submitted to Frontiers in Robotics and AI; Human-Robot Interactio

Gamification of assembly planning in virtual environment

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of the gamification of virtual assembly planning on the user performance, user experience and engagement. / Design/methodology/approach: A multi-touch table was used to manipulate virtual parts and gamification features were integrated into the virtual assembly environment. An experiment was conducted in two conditions: a gamified and a non-gamified virtual environment. Subjects had to assemble a virtual pump. The user performance was evaluated in terms of the number of errors, the feasibility of the generated assembly sequence and the user feedback. / Findings: The gamification reduced the number of errors and increased the score representing the number of right decisions. The results of the subjective and objective analysis showed that the number of errors decreased with engagement in the gamified assembly. The increase in the overall user experience reduced the number of errors. The subjective evaluation showed a significant difference between the gamified and the non-gamified assembly in terms of the level of engagement, the learning usability and the overall experience. / Research limitations/implications: The effective learning retention after training has not been tested, and longitudinal studies are necessary. The effect of the used gamification elements has been evaluated as a whole; further work could isolate the most beneficial features and add other elements that might be more beneficial for learning. / Originality/value: The research reported in this paper provides valuable insights into the gamification of virtual assembly using a low-cost multi-touch interface. The results are promising for training operators to assemble a product at the design stage

Génération des séquences de désassemblage et leur évaluation : Intégration dans un environnement de réalité virtuelle

Integration of disassembly operations during product design is an important issue today. It is estimated that at the earliest stages of product design, the cost of disassembly operations almost represents 30 % of its total cost. Nowadays, disassembly operation simulation of industrial products finds a strong interest in interactive simulations through immersive and real-time schemes. In this context, in the first place, this thesis presents a method for generating the feasible disassembly sequences for selective disassembly. The method is based on the lowest levels of a disassembly product graph. Instead of considering the geometric constraints for each pair of components, the proposed method considers the geometric contact and collision relationships among the components in order to generate the so-called Disassembly Geometry Contacting Graph (DGCG). The latter is then used for disassembly sequence generation thus allowing the number of possible sequences to be reduced by ignoring any components which are unrelated to the target. A simulation framework was developed integrated in a Virtual reality environment thus allowing generating the minimum number of possible disassembly sequences. Secondly, a method for disassembly operation evaluation by 3D geometric removability analysis in a Virtual environment is proposed. It is based on seven new criteria which are: visibility of a part, disassembly angles, number of tools' changes, path orientation changing, sub-assembly stability, neck score and bending score. All criteria are presented by dimensionless coefficients automatically calculated, thus allowing evaluating disassembly sequences complexity. For this purpose, a mixed virtual reality disassembly environment (VRDE) is developed based on Python programming language, utilizing VTK (Visualization Toolkit) and ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) libraries. The framework is based on STEP, WRL and STL exchange formats. The analysis results and findings demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach thus providing significant assistance for the evaluation of disassembly sequences during Product Development Process (PDP). Further consequences of the present work consist in ranking the criteria according to their importance. For this purpose, moderation coefficients may be allocated to each of them thus allowing a more comprehensive evaluating method.De nos jours, l'intégration des opérations de désassemblage lors de la conception des produits est un enjeu crucial. On estime que dans la phase initiale de la conception d'un produit, le coût des opérations de désassemblage représente environ 30% de son coût total. Ainsi, la simulation des opérations de désassemblage de produits industriels trouve un fort intérêt pour des simulations interactives grâce à des programmes d'immersion et en temps réel. Dans ce contexte, dans un premier temps, cette thèse présente une méthode de génération des séquences de désassemblage possibles pour le désassemblage sélectif. La méthode est basée sur les niveaux les plus bas du graphe de désassemblage des produits. Au lieu de considérer les contraintes géométriques pour chaque paire de composants, la méthode proposée tient compte des contacts (relations géométriques entre les composants) et des collisions afin de générer le Graphe Géométrique de Contacts et de Désassemblage (DGCG). Celui-ci est ensuite utilisé pour la génération des séquences de désassemblage permettant ainsi de réduite le nombre de séquences possibles en ignorant les composants non liés avec la cible. Une application de simulation a été développée, intégrée dans un environnement de réalité virtuelle (RV) permettant ainsi la génération du nombre minimum de séquences possibles de désassemblage.Dans un second temps, une méthode d'évaluation des opérations de désassemblage par analyse géométrique 3D de l'amovibilité dans un environnement RV est proposée. Elle est basée sur sept nouveaux critères qui sont: la visibilité d'une pièce, les angles de désassemblage, le nombre des changements d'outils, le changement d'orientation des trajectoires, la stabilité des sous-ensembles, les angles de rotation du cou et flexion du corps. Tous ces critères sont présentés par des coefficients sans dimension calculés automatiquement par l'application développée, permettant ainsi d'évaluer la complexité des séquences de désassemblage. A cet effet, un environnement mixte de réalité virtuelle pour le désassemblage (VRDE) est développé, basé sur le langage de programmation Python, en utilisant deux bibliothèques : VTK (Visualisation Toolkit) et ODE (Open Dynamics Engine), les formats d'échange étant fichiers: STEP, WRL et STL. L'analyse des résultats obtenus démontrent la fiabilité de l'approche proposée fournissant ainsi une aide non négligeable pour l'évaluation des séquences de désassemblage lors de processus de développement de produits (PDP). Les autres conséquences de ce travail consistent à classer les critères en fonction de leur importance. A cet effet, des coefficients de modération peuvent être attribués à chacun d'eux permettant ainsi une méthode d'évaluation plus complète

A 6-DOF haptic manipulation system to verify assembly procedures on CAD models

During the design phase of products and before going into production, it is necessary to verify the presence of mechanical plays, tolerances, and encumbrances on production mockups. This work introduces a multi-modal system that allows verifying assembly procedures of products in Virtual Reality starting directly from CAD models. Thus leveraging the costs and speeding up the assessment phase in product design. For this purpose, the design of a novel 6-DOF Haptic device is presented. The achieved performance of the system has been validated in a demonstration scenario employing state-of-the-art volumetric rendering of interaction forces together with a stereoscopic visualization setup

Hybrid optical and magnetic manipulation of microrobots

Microrobotic systems have the potential to provide precise manipulation on cellular level for diagnostics, drug delivery and surgical interventions. These systems vary from tethered to untethered microrobots with sizes below a micrometer to a few microns. However, their main disadvantage is that they do not have the same capabilities in terms of degrees-of-freedom, sensing and control as macroscale robotic systems. In particular, their lack of on-board sensing for pose or force feedback, their control methods and interface for automated or manual user control are limited as well as their geometry has few degrees-of-freedom making three-dimensional manipulation more challenging. This PhD project is on the development of a micromanipulation framework that can be used for single cell analysis using the Optical Tweezers as well as a combination of optical trapping and magnetic actuation for recon gurable microassembly. The focus is on untethered microrobots with sizes up to a few tens of microns that can be used in enclosed environments for ex vivo and in vitro medical applications. The work presented investigates the following aspects of microrobots for single cell analysis: i) The microfabrication procedure and design considerations that are taken into account in order to fabricate components for three-dimensional micromanipulation and microassembly, ii) vision-based methods to provide 6-degree-offreedom position and orientation feedback which is essential for closed-loop control, iii) manual and shared control manipulation methodologies that take into account the user input for multiple microrobot or three-dimensional microstructure manipulation and iv) a methodology for recon gurable microassembly combining the Optical Tweezers with magnetic actuation into a hybrid method of actuation for microassembly.Open Acces

A systematic review of augmented reality applications in maintenance

Augmented Reality (AR) technologies for supporting maintenance operations have been an academic research topic for around 50 years now. In the last decade, major progresses have been made and the AR technology is getting closer to being implemented in industry. In this paper, the advantages and disadvantages of AR have been explored and quantified in terms of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for industrial maintenance. Unfortunately, some technical issues still prevent AR from being suitable for industrial applications. This paper aims to show, through the results of a systematic literature review, the current state of the art of AR in maintenance and the most relevant technical limitations. The analysis included filtering from a large number of publications to 30 primary studies published between 1997 and 2017. The results indicate a high fragmentation among hardware, software and AR solutions which lead to a high complexity for selecting and developing AR systems. The results of the study show the areas where AR technology still lacks maturity. Future research directions are also proposed encompassing hardware, tracking and user-AR interaction in industrial maintenance is proposed