This thesis is part of a project proposed by the collaborative research area Mission 0 House, whose mandate is eliminating anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions from material, products and processes. The project is to create a super-sorting process for batteries to improve their recycling and the quality of recycled materials.

The work of this thesis focuses on the step that follows the analysis of batteries, namely how to distribute the batteries in the bins corresponding to their identity, in a fast and efficient way. The batteries under study are the cylindrical, rectangular and button cell ones. The work is first conducted with a merely mechanical approach, concluding that technologies using air jets and moving blades are the most suitable for sorting batteries. The work is then conducted with a robotic approach, including a study on grippers and experiments on a foam-type gripper. Tests conclude that the small size and thinness of button cells makes it difficult for the gripper to grab them, especially when working at high robot speed.

The experiments made it possible to choose the shape of the foam gripper, an elongated shape with a single line of suction holes, particularly effective for catching rectangular and cylindrical batteries on the edge.