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Product disassembly is essential for remanufacturing operations and recovery of end-of-use devices. However, disassembly has often been performed manually with significant safety issues for human workers. Recently, human-robot collaboration has become popular to reduce the human workload and handle hazardous materials. However, due to the current limitations of robots, they are not fully capable of performing every disassembly task. It is critical to determine whether a robot can accomplish a specific disassembly task. This study develops a disassembly score which represents how easy is to disassemble a component by robots, considering the attributes of the component along with the robotic capability. Five factors, including component weight, shape, size, accessibility, and positioning, are considered when developing the disassembly score. Further, the relationship between the five factors and robotic capabilities, such as grabbing and placing, is discussed. The MaxViT (Multi-Axis Vision Transformer) model is used to determine component sizes through image processing of the XPS 8700 desktop, demonstrating the potential for automating disassembly score generation. Moreover, the proposed disassembly score is discussed in terms of determining the appropriate work setting for disassembly operations, under three main categories: human-robot collaboration (HRC), semi-HRC, and worker-only settings. A framework for calculating disassembly time, considering human-robot collaboration, is also proposed.
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Case-based Robotic Architecture with Multiple Underlying Ethical Frameworks for Human-Robot Interaction
As robots are becoming more intelligent and more commonly used, it is critical for robots to behave ethically in human-robot interactions. However, there is a lack of agreement on a correct moral theory to guide human behavior, let alone robots. This paper introduces a robotic architecture that leverages cases drawn from different ethical frameworks to guide the ethical decision-making process and select the appropriate robotic action based on the specific situation. We also present an architecture implementation design used on a pill sorting task for older adults, where the robot needs to decide if it is appropriate to provide false encouragement so that the adults continue to be engaged in the training task.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1848974
- PAR ID:
- 10394583
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 7th International Conference on Robot Ethics and Standards
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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