As the world moves toward a circular economy, reducing waste and reusing resources is no longer optional, it’s essential. Disassembly, the ability to take products apart efficiently, is a critical step for repair, remanufacturing, and recycling. Manual disassembly remains the most common practice because it offers flexibility, but it is slow and labor-intensive. Robotic disassembly is faster for repetitive tasks but costly and less adaptable to design variations. The future lies in human–robot cooperation, combining the strengths of both. However, there’s a question: how to measure the ease of disassembly in such hybrid systems?
A key enabler of waste reduction is the Digital Product Passport (DPP), a digital record that stores sustainability and lifecycle information for products. But what kind of data should these passports include to make repair, remanufacturing and recycling truly practical?
Terrin Pulikottil from Re- and Demanufacturing Lab reflects on these two questions in his new scientific paper:
Our research tackles this gap by answering two questions:
1. What disassembly details should a Digital Product Passport include to evaluate human–robot cooperation?
2. What metric best measures how easy a product is to take apart when both humans and robots are involved?
This work makes two key contributions. First, it defines the essential disassembly details that should be included in a Digital Product Passport (DPP) to determine whether robotic disassembly is feasible, something which was not clearly addressed before, despite its importance for repair, remanufacture and recycling. Second, it introduces a new metric that uses this data to measure how easily a product can be disassembled by humans, robots, or both. This approach fills a critical gap as future products will increasingly rely on human–robot collaboration for efficient end-of-life treatment.
We introduce a flexible demanufacturing cell that integrates a 6-DOF industrial robot with tool changers, vision, and safety systems alongside a human workstation, enabling efficient and adaptable human–robot disassembly across diverse products [1].
We propose Robotic ease of Disassembly Metric (Re-DiM), a time-based calculated metric that compares manual disassembly with human–robot cooperative disassembly to identify the most efficient approach.
The metric is validated through case studies on vacuum cleaners, e-bike batteries, and electric vehicle motors, revealing design features that enable or hinder automation. In the case of e-bike batteries, this builds on insights from our CADANS project on automated disassembly for circular value chains, where a detailed study was presented in a separate conference article [2].
The takeaway is clear: design choices matter. For example, products with standard screws are much easier to automate than those that rely on adhesives or snap-fits. By embedding structured disassembly data into Digital Product Passports and applying the Re-DiM metric, designers, policymakers, and remanufacturers can make informed decisions that accelerate the transition to a sustainable, circular economy.
References:
[1] Pulikottil, T., Rodríguez N.B., Sterkens, W., Peeters, J.R., Ease of robotic disassembly metric and information for digital product passports in flexible remanufacturing systems, Sustainable Production and Consumption, Volume 58, 2025, Pages 123-139, ISSN 2352-5509.
[2] Pulikottil, T., Sterkens, W., Piessens, M., Peeters, J.R. (2024). Robotic Ease of Disassembly Metric (Re-DiM) for Flexible Cooperative Remanufacturing of Bike Batteries. In: Secchi, C., Marconi, L. (eds) European Robotics Forum 2024. ERF 2024. Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 33. Springer.
Acknowledgements:
This research was conducted as part of the SCANDERE project, funded by the ERA-MIN3 program under grant number 101003575, and the Flanders Make DEMAN project. The e-bike battery disassembly study, in particular, was supported by the VLAIO Living Lab project CaDaNS (“Circulair Datagedreven Waardenetwerk rondom S-pedelecs”).
