Adaptive Robotic Levering for Recycling Tasks

Abstract

A common step in autonomous robotic disassembly (recycling) of electronics is levering, which allows the robot to apply greater forces when removing parts of the devices. In practical applications, the robot should be able to adapt a levering action to different device types without an operator specifically recording a trajectory for each device. A method to generalize the existing levering actions to new devices is thus needed. In this paper we present a parameterized algorithm for performing robotic levering using feedback-based control to determine contact points and a sinusoidal pattern to realize adaptive levering motion. The algorithm can deal with devices of different shapes. After the initial adaptation process, the subsequent executions of the learnt levering action can be sped up to improve performance.