TASK PLANNER FOR A COOPERATIVE DISASSEMBLY ROBOTIC SYSTEM Carolina Díaz, Santiago Puente, Fernando Torres University of Alicante Crta San Vicente del Raspeig s/n PO Box 03080, San Vicente del Raspeig- Spain cdiaz@dfists.ua.es, Santiago.Puente@ua.es, Fernando.Torres@ua.es Abstract: this paper proposes a task planner for a disassembly robotic system. In which two or more manipulators work in a cooperative way to solve the disassemble tasks. This method is based on the construction of decision trees schemes that allows the system to determine a general method to planner all the disassembly actions in a cooperative and coordinated way. In a cell composed for j robotic manipulators. Copyright © 2006 IFAC Keywords: cooperative, disassembly, task planner. 1. INTRODUCTION Environmental considerations in industrial activities have been growing continuously, thus the government proposes regulation on these aspects in different industrial areas. In 1998, the European Community introduced a report that contains regulation and norms to treat waste production in electrical and electronics devices. These regulation is still in effect (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment; Directive 2003/108/EC). These norms have implication in the development of the products. The environmental considerations must be taken into account in all the cycle of production. They must be involved in all the product life period, from the design stage passing through the consumer’s delivery until the end-of-life stage. This politic application pretends to eliminate the toxic waste generated by a product when its useful life ends, reducing the damage caused to the environment. Including two or more robotic manipulators working in a cooperative way increases the performance of the disassembly system because the synergy that produces a group of units working jointly as a team. The value of a group of entities collaborating among them, working in group as a team has been proven many times in many domains. For example, in nature a group of animals working cooperatively as a team, can manage to hunt a stronger and bigger animal. Or in the military service a group of men with limited resources and specific abilities are united to create groups with an incredible capacity. These examples illustrate that a group of entities with similar or different abilities joined to work in a team, can produces a work unit with abilities and capacities greater than the sum of its parts (Navarro-Serment, et al., 2002) Disassembly is defined like the process of separating pieces that compose an object; automatic implies the intervention of robotic manipulators. In this process is very useful to consider the advantages of cooperative tasks, in which two or more robots take part. Or tasks in which the intervention of a human being is required (Adams and Skubic, 2005). In this article only the first way is considered: two or more manipulators working together in a coordinated way. The second option, cooperation between human and robot is considered for future works. This article is organized as follows: after the introduction in Section 2 the working cell is described. Then, in Section 3, the system architecture is shown, and the task planner is developed. In Section 4 an application example is explained. And finally conclusions and future works are presented. 2. WORKING CELL The automatic disassembly robotic cell is composed of the elements described in Fig. 1: - Robotic Manipulator Mitsubishi® PA-10.