Automatic Disassembly

Disassembly is studied with applications to design evaluation (by computing the direction of access and the number of component removals) and to automatic assembly (by reversing a disassembly sequence for the entire assembly). An algorithm for constructing a Disassembly Tree that yields a minimal sequence of linear motions for a robot is presented. It is shown that the Disassembly Tree can be constructed in time proportional to the number of edges in a planar assembly.