As part of the European Free4Lib project, the Eurecat technology centre has developed a demonstrator of a collaborative robotics solution for advanced dismantling and recycling of electric vehicle batteries. It is designed to improve the efficiency and safety of the process, cut operating costs, ensure the extraction of valuable materials from the batteries and minimise their environmental impact.
Each electric vehicle battery is unique and so “their disassembly calls for continuous adaptation which involves specific adjustments of parameters and tapping advanced technologies such as computer vision to ensure precise and non-destructive disassembly which makes for efficient recovery of the materials they contain,” says Eric Domingo, a researcher in Eurecat’s Robotics and Automation Unit.
“We are developing a solution that is independent of the type of battery, scalable and reusable in other scenarios without needing predefined information by harnessing automatic online programming,” adds Néstor García, head of the Robotic Handling Line in Eurecat’s Robotics and Automation Unit.
The collaborative robotics solution will allow the operator to perform higher value-added tasks in the same workspace as the robot which is fitted with an industrial screwdriver to use the tools needed at each stage of disassembly.
The robot can identify the position of the screws using an onboard depth camera and detects them through training with the You Only Look Once (YOLO) algorithm.
For handling bulky objects, such as the battery cover, a customised tool has been manufactured with multiple foam clamps to fit any surface and provide a secure grip.
The robot is mounted on an external linear axis which means it can move along the entire length of the battery for complete and efficient dismantling. Eurecat has also designed a combined manipulator for the linear axis and the robot to plan and perform pathways.
Finally, the robot’s behaviour has been developed using Behaviour Tree, a library built at the technology centre and designed to create behaviour trees for planning robotic system tasks.
In the Free4Lib project, Eurecat has analysed the parts of the process to identify tasks with a greater risk of causing damage or injury to operators and involving more repetitive work with a view to automating them.
Efficient lithium-ion battery dismantling
The Free4Lib project seeks to address the growing need to develop efficient and safe processes for dismantling and sorting end-of-life lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) due to the exponential increase in demand across various sectors and to identify opportunities to improve efficiency and safety in these processes with human-robot collaboration.
Specifically, this initiative targets developing six sustainable, innovative and efficient processes for recycling end-of-life batteries, including dismantling, pre-treatment and four material recovery processes.
The Free4Lib ‘Feasible Recovery of critical raw materials through a new circular ecosystem for a Li-Ion battery cross-value chain in Europe’ project consortium is coordinated by CARTIF and financed by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme.
