RECONCYCLE: Self-Reconfiguration of A Robotic Work cell For the Recycling of Electronic Waste

Currently industrial robots perform rigidly programmed tasks in highly-constrained settings. Any change in product or process requires costly restructuring of hardware and software. ReconCycle will address these issues by introducing the concept of robotic self-reconfiguration in the largely unconstrained domain of electronic waste recycling, which is still dominated by manual labor. Automation in this sector can benefit from the fact that very large batches of the same device type are to be processed but with some model differences and showing different states of damage. To be able to deal with each of these individual models, the robotic system requires flexible adaptation. Thus, the scientific objective of ReconCycle is to introduce in this sector self-reconfigurable hardware and software based on a reconfigurable robotic cell developed in a previous project.

Detailed Information on the project and the consortium can be found at the ReconCycle project page.