D. T. Pham

• University of Birmingham

Disassembly is a critical step in the remanufacturing of end-of-life products. High labor costs and the limited ability of robots to perform intricate disassembly tasks have led to the increasing use of human‒robot collaboration (HRC) for disassembly. This paper addresses a challenge in HRC-based disassembly, i.e., the inherent human uncertainty du...

Faults occurring during machining processes can severely impact productivity and product quality. Deep learning models have been actively used to develop fault diagnosis approaches. However, it is challenging for industries to adopt the approaches due to their inability to adapt to varying machining conditions. To address the issue, a novel diagnos...

This paper aimed at facilitating robotized disassembly for remanufacturing by focusing on the challenge of rectangular peg–hole disassembly. The study explores all potential contact states during the rectangular peg–hole disassembly process and identifies 26 distinct conditions, 16 of which are related to jamming. The contact conditions are categor...

In computational optimization, the Beetle Antennae Search algorithm is renowned for its bio-inspired mechanics and robust performance. However, its efficacy is often challenged by complex, multimodal landscapes in real-world applications. This study introduces an innovative methodology leveraging OpenAI’s ChatGPT to enhance the Beetle Antennae Sear...

The International Workshop on the Bees Algorithm and its Applications (BAA) is an interdisciplinary forum for researchers and engineers to share the latest research results, ideas, and developments relating to the popular bees-inspired optimisation technique and its applications. The first online workshop on September 29, 2021, centred around appl...

Electrified propulsion systems are a promising way of reducing traffic-related pollution. Because of the characteristics of the exhaust systems of engine-assisted vehicles, it is possible that pedestrians in close proximity to vehicles may encounter situations with high enough concentrations of emissions to cause specific health effects. To decreas...

Microwave filter optimisation is an important example of black-box optimisation, where the objective function is unknown and requires full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulations. This problem is challenging and even computationally intractable for commonly used global optimisation techniques due to the multimodal and computationally expensive nature...

This study proposes a methodology for integrating the use of the Bees Algorithm (BA) and simulation to reduce the workload for workers on production and assembly lines. Simulation is first employed for retrieving ergonomics data for different workers. Then, the BA is used as a tool for optimising the job rotations of the workers among the workstati...

This chapter discusses modifications to the basic Bees Algorithm to enhance its performance. The proposed changes involve adding an early neighbourhood scanning step to determine promising areas from which to start the local search operation and making the recruitment process dynamic by varying the number of bees recruited to exploit a patch accord...

This chapter presents a Bees Algorithm (BA) Optimisation Toolkit developed in LabVIEW. The BA is an effective optimisation algorithm that mimics the nectar-foraging behaviour of honey bees. LabVIEW is a powerful program for data acquisition and control applications that is very popular in industry. There are tools within the scope of optimisation w...

The green vehicle routing problem (GVRP) aims to find a set of vehicle tours that minimise the total distance travelled to service a subset of customers while incorporating stops at alternative fuel stations because of the vehicle's limited fuel capacity. This is the first study to investigate using the Bees Algorithm to find a solution to the GVRP...

Hyperparameter searching is one of the significant challenges in training deep learning models. To solve this challenge, the Bees Algorithm (BA), which simulates the foraging behaviour of honey bees, is used for hyperparameter searching and finding the best set of hyperparameters for a given deep learning model. This study applies a two-parameter v...

The Bees Algorithm is a well-known metaheuristic optimisation method that has been applied in many disciplines with noticeable success. For example, it has been applied to machine scheduling, training artificial neural networks (ANNs) for pattern recognition, and the design of mechanical structures. There have been many attempts to improve the Bees...

Remanufacturing, which benefits the environment and saves resources, is attracting increasing attention. Disassembly is arguably the most critical step in the remanufacturing of end-of-life (EoL) products. Human–robot collaborative disassembly as a flexible semi-automated approach can increase productivity and relieve people of tedious, laborious,...

Disassembly is a key step in remanufacturing, especially for end-of-life (EoL) products such as electric vehicle (EV) batteries, which are challenging to dismantle due to uncertainties in their condition and potential risks of fire, fumes, explosions, and electrical shock. To address these challenges, this paper presents a robotic teleoperation sys...

Based on bee foraging behaviour, the Bees Algorithm (BA) is an optimisation metaheuristic algorithm which has found many applications in both the continuous and combinatorial domains. The original version of the Bees Algorithm has six user-selected parameters: the number of scout bees, the number of high-performing bees, the number of top-performin...

An active stabiliser bar significantly enhances the anti-roll capabilities of vehicles. The control strategy is a crucial factor in enabling the active stabiliser bar to function effectively. This paper investigates an active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) strategy. Given the numerous parameters of the ADRC and their significant mutual influe...

Uncertainties in robotic assembly can substantially influence the quality of assembly task planning, often resulting in suboptimal solutions. It is crucial to account for these uncertainties when developing assembly task plans that are both efficient and practical for multi-part products. To address such issues, the proposed method integrates the N...

As an essential step in remanufacturing end-of-life (EoL) products, disassembly is performed to retrieve high-value parts and materials for use in subsequent remanufacturing processes. Human–robot collaboration (HRC) supported by a brain-machine interface (BMI) can provide an intelligent and versatile solution to address the requirements of disasse...

9 Learning from demonstration (LfD) enables robots to intuitively acquire new skills from 10 human demonstrations and incrementally evolve robotic intelligence. Given the significance of 11 LfD in a wide variety of applications, this survey aims to update the recently related 12 development from the perspective of the autonomous generation of robot...

This book features the papers presented at IWAR 2023. The overall objective of the event was to bring together international scientists and engineers to bridge the academic and industrial worlds in the field of remanufacturing. Various themes related to remanufacturing, including methods for operations management, methodologies for quality assessme...

This paper presents the results of an experimental study conducted in the field of human–robot interaction (HRI) aimed at evaluating the impact of the presence of a robot on human performance. Experiments were carried out in a virtual reality (VR) environment and were about a disassembly-reassembly task in the aerospace field. A sample of 78 engine...

In recent years, a circular economy model has been established to promote sustainability. The model supports a service-oriented approach where leasing-based strategies can be applied to part and component use (multiple use) and recovery and rearrangement. Product leasing can recreate value in each cycle for both the lessor (i.e., remanufacturer) an...

To develop vision systems for autonomous robotic disassembly, this paper presents a dual-loop implementation architecture that enables a robot vision system to learn from human vision in disassembly tasks. The architecture leverages human visual knowledge through a collaborative scheme named 'learning-by-doing'. In the dual-loop implementation arch...

With the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, production and manufacturing processes and systems have become more complex. Obtaining the best performance from them requires efficient and effective optimisation techniques that do not depend on the availability of process or system models. Such models are usually either not obtainable or mathe...

Disassembly is a crucial step in remanufacturing and is currently mainly performed by humans. Automating disassembly can reduce labour costs and make remanufacturing more economically attractive. This paper focuses on identifying and characterizing a common disassembly task, dual peg-hole disassembly, with the aim of building a robotic disassembly...

Electric vehicles (EVs) have been experiencing radical growth to embrace the ambitious targets of decarbonisation and circular economies. The trend has led to a significant surge in the number of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) that will soon reach the end-of-life (EoL) stage. Given that landfilling EoL EV LIBs generates substantially negative impacts...

8 Human-robot collaboration (HRC) can greatly facilitate the disassembling processes of end-of-9 life (EoL) products. For the robot in HRC, an intuitive control function enabled by a brain-10 machine interface (BMI) and human brainwaves will be useful to support dynamic decision-11 making under various disassembly conditions. However, a major chall...

Efficient processing of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries of electric vehicles is important and a pressing challenge for a circular economy. Regardless of whether the processing strategy is recycling, repurposing or remanufacturing, the first processing step would usually involve disassembly. As battery disassembly is a dangerous task, efforts have...

The integration of green design into building construction is a necessary process in today’s world to address environmental issues and achieve sustainable development. However, when evaluating green building design schemes, various factors are intertwined with a high degree of complexity and uncertainty. To realise rational decision-making about gr...

It is well accepted that remanufacturing, the returning of a product that has reached the end of its service life to its original condition, is economically and environmentally beneficial. Robotizing disassembly can make remanufacturing even more cost-effective by removing a substantial proportion of the labour costs associated with dismantling end...

Robot-assisted screw removal can greatly facilitate the disassembly and remanufacturing automation of end-of-life products to realise circular economies. However, it is challenging to determine the exact positions of disassembling screws in practical remanufacturing environments. To tackle the issue, in this research, a novel approach designed base...

The Bees Algorithm (BA) is an intelligent, nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithm first introduced in 2005 and based on the foraging activity of honeybees. Enhancements to the BA have been made continually since its introduction, with some aimed at reducing the number of user-determined parameters. The goal is to achieve optimal results without ex...

In a circular economy, strategies for product recovery, such as reuse, recycling, and remanufacturing, play an important role at the end of a product’s life. A sustainability model was developed to solve the problem of sequence-dependent robotic disassembly line balancing. This research aimed to assess the viability of the model, which was optimise...

This paper introduces a new variant of the Bees Algorithm (BA) called Bees Algorithm with 2-parameter (BA2), which is a population-based metaheuristic algorithm designed to solve continuous and combinatorial optimisation problems. The proposed algorithm simplified the BA’s parameters by combining exploration and exploitation strategies while preser...

This paper proposes a platform for robots to learn disassembly tasks based on reinforcement learning (RL) techniques. The platform is demonstrated by a robot learning the skill of removing a bolt along a door-chain groove in a data-driven way, where the clearance between the bolt and the groove is less than 1mm. Furthermore, the relationship betwee...

The cylindrical peg–hole system is a popular model in the study of assembly and disassembly operations. The analysis of peg–hole systems is customarily performed using simplified two-dimensional representations, viz. a vertical sectional view. However, evidence that this simplification accurately represents the system is lacking. This paper investi...

Human–robot collaboration (HRC) plays a pivotal role in today’s industry by supporting increasingly customised product development. Via HRC, the strengths of humans and robots can be combined to facilitate collaborative jobs within common workplaces to achieve specific industrial goals. Given the significance of safety assurance in HRC, in this sur...

End-of-life (EOL) products are getting more and more attention as a result of the rapid decline in environmental resources and the dramatic rise in population at the moment. Disassembly is a crucial step in the reuse of EOL products. However, the disassembly process for EOL products is highly uncertain, and the disassembly planning method may not p...

With the development of the industrial economy and the accelerated renewal of products, many end-of-life products (EOL) have been generated to pollute our environment. This fact highlights the importance of recycling and remanufacturing EOL products as an active research topic. An efficient disassembly line is one solution for improving the remanuf...

For remanufacturing to be more economically attractive, there is a need to develop automatic disassembly and automated visual detection methods. Screw removal is a common step in end-of-life product disassembly for remanufacturing. This paper presents a two-stage detection framework for structurally damaged screws and a linear regression model of r...

The International Workshop on the Bees Algorithm and its Applications (BAA) is an interdisciplinary forum for researchers and engineers to share the latest research results, ideas, and developments relating to the popular bees-inspired optimisation technique and its applications.

The Earth Observation Satellite Scheduling Problem (EOSSP) is difficult to solve due to its scale and constraints. Through analysing the problem, we build a mathematical programming model of the EOSSP. After that, we propose a reinforcement-learning-driven bees algorithm (RLBA) to solve a large-scale EOSSP (LSEOSSP). The RLBA adopts a Q-learning me...

Due to environmental pollution and resource shortages, the electric vehicle industry has been developing swiftly, and the market demand for batteries, as an essential part of electric vehicles, has also surged. Proper disassembly of end-of-life vehicle batteries (ELV batteries) is necessary to achieve the integrity and closure of their life cycle,...

The insertion of a cylindrical peg into a cylindrical hole is often used by robotics researchers as a model for studying assembly operations. This is because many assembly operations can be represented as the mating of a male cylindrical object into a matching female object. The device was an inverted Gough-Whitehall-Stewart mechanism where the six...

Materials with programmable conductivity and stiffness offer new design opportunities for next-generation engineered systems in soft robotics and electronic devices. However, existing approaches fail to harness variable electrical and mechanical properties synergistically and lack the ability to self-respond to environmental changes. We report an e...

Remanufacturing is widely recognised as a key contributor to the circular economy (CE) as it extends the in-use life of products, but its synergy with Industry 4.0 (I4.0) has received little attention when compared to manufacturing. An agglomeration of I4.0 technologies and methodologies is reflected in the emerging digital twin (DT) concept, which...

Product disassembly is a vital element of recycling and remanufacturing processes. The disassembly line balancing problem (DLBP), i.e., how to assign a set of tasks to a disassembly workstation, is crucial for a product disassembly process. Based on the importance of energy efficiency in product disassembly and the trend toward green remanufacturin...

Disassembly is the first step in the remanufacturing of a product. This paper presents the design of a robot end-of-arm tool for removing a peg from a hole, a common operation in the disassembly of mechanical products. The device is a compliant structure that enables the peg to be pulled out of a closely fitting hole without jamming or wedging. The...

Remanufacturing is a key component of a circular economy. It enables the reduction of landfill and the preservation of natural resources, therefore benefiting the environment. Disassembly is the first stage in the remanufacturing process, but, so far, has been mostly a manual operation. Transitioning from manual to robotic disassembly is desirable...

In recent years, remanufacturingRemanufacturing has become critical for environmental protection and natural resource conservation. The purpose of the work reported in this chapter is to find the best plan for product disassemblyDisassembly, the first step in the recovery of end-of-life products, balancing the three goals of sustainabilitySustainab...

RemanufacturingRemanufacturing is an important way to realize environmental protection and resource reutilization by reusing end-of-life products. DisassemblyDisassembly is an important process of remanufacturingRemanufacturing. Manual disassembly is a common method used to disassemble end-of-life products; it is expensive and inefficient. Recently...

RemanufacturingRemanufacturing represents one of the most promising strategies for reaching economic and environmental sustainabilitySustainability goals. The implementation of cloud technologies in the classical remanufacturingRemanufacturing process provides an opportunity to define a novel approach called cloudCloudremanufacturingRemanufacturing...

The Bees Algorithm is a popular optimisation method taking inspiration from the food foraging behaviour of honey bees. The algorithm performs a kind of exploitative neighbourhood search combined with random explorative search. This chapter describes in detail the Bees Algorithm and its variants. The description of the Bees Algorithm is framed in th...

In this study, the bees traplining metaphor was adopted for the Bees Algorithm (BA) and the Combinatorial Bees Algorithm (BAC) and applied to solve the vehicle routing problem. The two-parameter Continuous and Combinatorial Bees Algorithms (BA2 and BAC2), equipped with a traplining metaphor intensifier, Bees Routing Optimiser (BRO), were used to so...

In a human-robot collaborative disassembly line, multiple people and robots collaboratively perform disassembly operations at each workstation. Due to dynamic factors, such as end-of-life product quality and human capabilities, the line balancing problem for the human-robot collaborative disassembly line is a dynamic optimisation problem. Therefore...

Remanufacturing, as a way to achieve the circular economy paradigm, can help save the environment by reducing the use of raw materials and energy, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and virtually eliminating the need for landfill. Disassembly is a critical first step in the remanufacturing process. This research uses the Bees Algorithm to optimise ro...

Materials with programmable conductivity and stiffness offer new design opportunities for next-generation engineered systems in soft robotics and wearable devices. However, existing approaches fail to harness variable electrical and mechanical properties synergistically, and lack the ability to self-respond to environmental changes. We report an el...

Remanufacturing represents one of the most promising strategies for promoting circular economy (CE) principles and achieving economic and environmental sustainability goals. The implementation of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) enabling technologies such as cloud computing and the Internet of Things in the classical remanufacturing process provides the opportu...

The aim of this paper is to provide a multi-criteria decision-making intelligent approach based on Industry 4.0 and Triple Bottom Line principles for sustainable supply chain development in the renewable energy sector. In particular, the solar photovoltaic energy supply chain is used as a case study, encompassing the entire energy production proces...

A digital twin is a “live” virtual replica of a sensorised component, product, process, human, or system. It accurately copies the entity being modelled by capturing information in real time, or near real time, from the entity, through embedded sensors and the Internet-of-Things. Many applications of digital twins in the manufacturing industry have...

Remanufacturing end-of-life (EoL) products is a critical step to effectively retrieve high-value components or materials from the products. Statistics show that unscrewing is one of major activities in remanufacturing. Human-robot collaboration (HRC) is a sensible strategy to leverage the strengths of human operators and robots to take off screws u...

Disassembly is the first step in the remanufacturing of a product. This paper presents the design of a robot end-of-arm tool for removing a peg from a hole, a common operation in the disassembly of mechanical products. The device is a compliant structure that enables the peg to be pulled out of a closely fitting hole without jamming or wedging. The...

This chapter examines the balancing of robotic disassembly lines. It details the modelling of the line balancing problem and presents various models developed in recent years. The chapter also discusses the use of probability distributions and fuzzy numbers to account for uncertainties in task durations.

This chapter discusses serial paced mixed-model disassembly line balancing with multi-robot workstations (MDLB-MR). The main difference between MDLB-MR and classic simple disassembly lines is the number of robots that can be allocated to each workstation. In MDLB-MR, a set of EOL products can be simultaneously disassembled and each product has its...

The performance of an evolutionary algorithm in solving disassembly sequence planning or disassembly line balancing greatly depends on six parts: the evolutionary operator; encoding scheme; solution selection and update strategy; population initialisation; solution maintenance; and terminal condition. This chapter introduces classical single-object...

This chapter discusses the need for component and subassembly detection for robotic disassembly and introduces a two-pointer detection strategy to find removable components and subassemblies online during disassembly. The strategy is shown to be quick and simple to use for disassembly sequence planning and replanning. Only an interference matrix is...

Most disassembly optimisation problems start with designing a mathematical representation that can describe component relations. This chapter discusses and compares three major groups of component relation models: the matrix-based model, graph-based model and hybrid-based model.

This chapter briefly explains remanufacturing and its motivation and introduces the main classes of optimisation problems in remanufacturing.

Based on the detection strategy introduced in Chapter 4, a ternary Bees Algorithm is presented to provide a re-planning solution, combining the disassembly order and the direction of not only detachable components but also the removable subassemblies. The algorithm possesses the merits of both the original Bees Algorithm and greedy search. Although...

This chapter discusses the prerequisites of robotic disassembly sequence planning as opposed to manual disassembly planning. Optimisation variables, objectives and constraints are summarised and modelled mathematically. Multiple disassembly operations with direction change and tool change, additional adjustment strategies, backup strategies, and hu...

This chapter demonstrates the use of the model proposed in Chapter 6 and presents the solution of the robotic disassembly line balancing problem (DLBP) for benchmark cases using different optimisation algorithms. The best algorithms for large-scale multi-objective disassembly line balancing problems are shown to be NSGA-III and IBEA.

This chapter gives an overview of robotic disassembly for remanufacturing. The general concept, characteristics and enablers of robotic disassembly are reviewed. The chapter also outlines a systematic workflow for designing robotic disassembly cells based on techniques for assembly cell design.

Uncertainties in the end-of-life conditions of products make disassembly difficult to robotise. A key problem is that existing industrial automation techniques use pre-determined robotic processes which cannot deal with unforeseen failed disassembly operations. This chapter models the completion rate of a disassembly plan and introduces the concept...

This book illustrates the main characteristics, challenges and optimisation requirements of robotic disassembly. It provides a comprehensive insight on two crucial optimisation problems in the areas of robotic disassembly through a group of unified mathematical models. The online and offline optimisation of the operational sequence to dismantle a p...