The greenBatt-project DemoSens targets the “Digitalisation of automated disassembly and sensor-based mechanical treatment of lithium-ion-batteries for high-quality recycling”.
Four institutes, Institut für Unternehmenskybernetik (IfU) e.V., IME Process Metallurgy and Metal Recycling, IWARU – FH Münster and Production Engineering of E-Mobility Components (PEM) – RWTH Aachen University focus on the digitalisation and automation of the entire process chain from disassembly and sorting to mechanical processing of the battery components: A robotic system is to be set up which is able to carry out disassembly to module level using optical sensor systems and adapted machine learning algorithms. The dismantled components and fractions are characterized with the help of sensor-based systems and sorted into appropriate fractions for optimized recycling.
The focus of the IfU lies in developing and adapting vision algorithms to detect the various battery components and determine e.g. grasping points for the robotic systems. Another research aspect is the development of reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms to enable the robot to learn suitable trajectories. This is applicable for components where the motion for disassembly cannot be easily defined beforehand.
We thank the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for funding.
Find out more here: https://www.greenbatt-cluster.de/en/projects/demosens/