Exploitable results An autonomous car dismantling station A prototype of an autonomous car dismantling station was built, consisting of a car handling frame and dismantling tools. The tools are robot controlled and operate on basis of a visual identification system. In this way certain components such as tyres, batteries, glass and liquids (most of them containing environmentally harmful materials) can be removed. Compared to manual dismantling the processing speed is significantly higher and employees are relieved from health and safety risks. The dismantling station is most suitable for bigger recyclers, who have to dismantle and remove a large amount of environmentally harmful parts before crushing the cars. The handling frame, which is in fact the body of the dismantling station, is made of beams which are situated between two ordinary car lifters. These lifters are mutually connected to assure synchronous functioning. When pressed between the two side beams, the car can be lifted to a desired height and be rotated longitudinally along +/- 90 degrees. In this way it is possible to optimise the position of the car for different dismantling operations. Although it is not yet possible to dismantle the entire vehicle, several developed tools are able to remove some relevant components already: tyre gripper to remove the tyre from the wheel; battery gripper and cable scissors to take out the battery and stow it on a storage container; windscreen cutter to cut the laminated wind screen off the car body; side window breaker to break the side windows into pieces. The frame itself and, before all, the tyre gripper are new innovations. One has to bear in mind that the tyre gripper cannot be used manually. It always requires the robot station to operate. Neural network-based robots for disassembly and recycling of automotive products The integrated result of the Neurobot project consortium demonstrates the feasibility of a new generation of industrial robot systems, which are able to carry out automotive disassembly operations autonomously irrespective of car brand and type. These robots operate more precisely and more cost effectively, using neural network concepts. Instead of conventional programming, automated path planning and neural network vision is used to co-ordinate the robot actions. A multisensor system, consisting of non-tactile sensors transmits data about 3-dimensional position and material composition of automotive components to the task planning network. By means of automotive reference data and disassembly strategies the disassembly of relevant components is determined. Accurate movement of the robot as well as correction of errors and collision avoidance are controlled by means of the task planning network with the help of kinematic and dynamic networks. Special tools were developed such as a car handling unit, tyre removal gripper, windscreen cutter, glass crusher and battery removal gripper. The technology of the NEUROBOT system can be used partly on short term to assist in improvements in manual dismantling techniques. The application of a fully integrated system will need further development. With some necessary peripheral changes, this autonomous robot system will also be able to analyse, disassemble and sort other environmental harmful waste goods in order to feed them into the recycling process. The advanced technology is further applicable in a wide range of other complex manufacturing processes and for product handling, which were difficult to automate before. Searching for OpenAIRE data... There was an error trying to search data from OpenAIRE No results available
