Learning and Generalising Object Extraction Skill for Contact-rich Disassembly Tasks: An Introductory Study

Abstract

Abstract Remanufacturing automation must be designed to be flexible and robust enough to overcome the uncertainties, conditions of the products, and complexities in the process's planning and operation. Machine learning, particularly reinforcement learning, methods are presented as techniques to learn, improve, and generalise the automation of many robotic manipulation tasks (most of them related to grasping, picking, or assembly). However, not much has been exploited in remanufacturing, in particular in disassembly tasks. This work presents the State-of-the-Art of contact-rich disassembly using reinforcement learning algorithms and a study about the object extraction skill's generalisation when applied to contact-rich disassembly tasks. The generalisation capabilities of two State-of-the-Art reinforcement learning agents (trained in simulation) are tested and evaluated in simulation and real-world while perform a disassembly task. Results shows that, at least, one of the agents can generalise the contact-rich extraction skill. Also, this work identifies key concepts and gaps for the reinforcement learning algorithms' research and application on disassembly tasks.