%0 Journal Article 
%A Álvarez-de-los-Mozos, Esther
%A Rentería-Bilbao, Arantxa
%A Díaz-Martín, Fernando
%T WEEE Recycling and Circular Economy Assisted by Collaborative Robots
%D 2020
* Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)
%X Considering the amount of waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) generated
each year at an increasing rate, it is of crucial importance to develop circular economy solutions
that prioritize reuse and recycling, as well as reducing the amount of waste that is disposed of at
landfills. This paper analyses the evolution of the amount of WEEE collection and its recycling rate at
the national and European levels. It also describes the regulatory framework and possible future
government policy measures to foster a circular economy. Furthermore, it identifies the different parts
and materials that can be recovered from the recycling process with a special emphasis on plastics.
Finally, it describes a recycling line that has been designed for the dismantling of computer cathodic
ray tubes (CRT)s that combines an innovative participation of people and collaborative robots which
has led to an effective and efficient material recovery solution. The key issue of this human–robot
collaboration relies on only assigning tasks that require human skills to operators and sending all
other tasks to robots. The first results from the model show a better economic performance than
current manual processes, mainly regarding the higher degree of separation of recovered materials
and plastic in particular, thus reaching higher revenues. This collaboration also brings considerable
additional benefits for the environment, through a higher recovery rate in weight and for workers,
who can make intelligent decisions in the factory and enjoy a safer working environment by avoiding
the most dangerous tasks.
%K Human-robot collaboration
%K Collaborative robots
%K WEEE waste management
doi 10.3390/app10144800
%U http://hdl.handle.net/11556/973
%~ GOEDOC, SUB GOETTINGEN