Stackelberg model-based human-robot collaboration in removing screws for product remanufacturing

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 under various rust conditions. Nevertheless, the capabilities of HRC need to be enhanced in terms of cooperation, safety and disassembly efficiency. To address this issue, in this paper, an innovative HRC approach enabled by the Stackelberg model for removing screws in EoL products is developed. The approach can address the dynamic and uncertain characteristics of human operators to achieve human-centric HRC disassembly. In this approach, utilities for the Stackelberge model are represented by considering the disassembly efficiency and safety of humans and robots. An innovative Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO)-Pareto algorithm (PSO-Pareto) is designed to achieve the best performance in terms of safety and disassembly efficiency. The effectiveness and generality of the approach were validated via experiments and case studies, and benchmarks with different designs proved the superiority of the approach.