Seminar: Robotic re-&demanufacturing in an industry 4.0 for a circular economy

Prof. Jef Peeters is an assistant professor at KU Leuven and co-chair of the Lifecycle Engineering research group at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and is responsible for the Re- and Demanufacturing Lab. His applied research focuses on (eco)design and rework, reuse, repair, remanufacturing, and recycling and targets the development of innovative products and processes for a circular economy. In addition, he has hands-on experience integrating robotics, computer vision, and artificial intelligence to the robotic disassembly of end-of-life electrical and electronic equipment and EV batteries.

To accelerate the transition towards a circular economy, the successful integration of industry 4.0 technologies will be crucial to increase the economic viability of rework, reuse, repair, remanufacturing, and recycling. Since these end-of-(first)-life treatment processes typically need to deal with a huge variation in product models and conditions, various opportunities were identified for the development of smarter products, as well as systems adopting and integrating various learning approaches for computer vision-driven human-robot cooperative re- and demanufacturing processes.