Robots- Controlling e-waste

Every year, a massive amount of electronic-waste (e-waste) is thrown out in Australia and the amount increases day by day. To tackle this problem, researchers from University of  New South Wales (UNSW) have programmed industrial robots to get this job done.

It is a collective project by researchers at School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering's Sustainable Manufacturing and Life Cycle Engineering Research Group (SMLCE) and the school of Computer Science and Engineering.

Researchers showed that robots can memorize the assembling and disassembling of electric product so that they can use this technique for the recycling of such products at increasing speed.

SMLCE founder and project Professor Sami Kara said that there are tons of end-of-life products that we don't know how to disassemble, despite legislation tells us to do so. "The biggest problem is uncertainty - the number of different products coming into electronic recycling centers and their condition", he said.


It is only the human who can deal with such a vast variety but that is still labor-intensive and costly to break down products one-by-one. But this can be dangerous as there are risks to exposure to toxic material that is used in electronic products.

The researchers believe that they can replace such process with cognitive robotics. As Professor Kara said, "We've successfully proven that you can teach a robot to disassemble LCD screens".  He also added that they break one or two but they learn by doing so and don't make the same mistake again.

In regards with the recycling of LCD, Professor Sami said,
"The idea id to remove the display and printed circuit board without damaging them because the rest can be recycled."

Altough the robot took some time to disassemble a screen it had never worked with before, "the next time a similar model comes in it only takes minutes."

With the concept proven in the lab, they are likely to involve industry trails so that they could put such robots on industry line.

Professor Kara also sees room to incorporate additional industrial robots into the set-up to handle e-waste as it loaded or unloaded from the robot performing dismantle.


"I'd like to look into using another robot for materials handling purposes," he says.
"You could isolate them in a cubicle, dump the screens in and have them work 24x7 non-stop."
It is believed similar techniques could be used to recycle lithium batteries, which can be volatile to disassemble.