A high-speed robotic disassembly system for the recycling and reuse of cellphones

Hundreds of millions of cellphones are thrown away every year, creating a market for large-scale recycle and reuse. We present a low-cost robot that can disassemble cellphone components in a nondestructive way and be distributed widely. The goal of this robot is to accelerate the recovery of millions of dollars worth of components and materials from the disposed cellphones. The disassembly of cellphones was reduced to primitive operations and the most important was determined to be prying. The prototype was tested on disconnecting flat flexible cable connectors which were universal and traditionally difficult for machines to remove. Multiple end effectors were designed, and different combinations of end effectors and motions were compared showing the optimum combination for prying is determined to be a compliant tool with a moving pivot motion. It allowed high success rate, minimal damage and good robustness against positioning errors. The prying and positioning of the machine was modeled and compared to experimental data to guide design and allow for generalization. Lastly, a decision-making system was designed specifically to work at high speeds and with multiple types of uncertainty.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Figueiredo, Wilhelmena

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kamal Youcef-Toumi.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/118726

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/118726