Component Influence-Driven Fastener Reduction for Robotic Disassemblability-Aware Design Simplification

Robotic disassembly must be considered during the product design phase to accelerate automated remanufacturing. However, designers currently lack quantitative feedback for identifying the structural elements that hinder robotic operations. To address this, this study proposes an analytical framework that provides actionable redesign guidance focused on fastener reduction, because fasteners are numerous and ubiquitous components found in almost all manufactured products. Using a computer-aided design (CAD) model and its automatically generated contact-connection-constraint (CCC) graph, the framework translates the robotic disassembly sequence planning outcomes into component influence scores. These scores reflect the frequency with which a component causes structural constraint violations or evaluation objective deteriorations in a robotic disassembly sequence. To visually highlight structural hindrances, the framework projects these scores onto the CAD geometry as 3D heatmaps. The system then analytically simulates the removal of highly influential fasteners. It reports the expected reductions in structural constraints, tool changes, and robot travel distances while preventing structurally unsafe modifications by evaluating geometric stability metrics. Experiments on seven household appliances demonstrated that the framework successfully targeted redundant fasteners. Removing the recommended fasteners simplified the structural dependencies by eliminating 8–132 structural constraints on the graph depending on the structural configuration of each product. Furthermore, it improved the robotic operational efficiency by eliminating unnecessary tool change operations and shortening travel distances by 165–1675 mm wherever it was structurally permissible.