The Buiding Eating Robot
Demolition of high rise buildings is
a rather dangerous and messy task, especially in densely populated areas. It
also requires a lot of heavy machinery. Now, a Turkish student by the
name Omer Haciomeroglu has won the 2013
International Design Excellence Award for mechanical
design from the Industrial Designers Society on America with a
robot that can potentially eat concrete and erase a building with no trace,
whilst reusing all the extracted material.
“The ERO Concrete Recycling Robot
was designed to efficiently disassemble concrete structures without any waste,
dust or separation and enable reclaimed building materials to be reused for new
prefabricated concrete buildings,” explained Haciomeroglu of the Umea
Institute of Design.
The robots (almost resembling WALL-E
in design form and use) will have the ability to scan a building and plan out
the most efficient route before blasting the wall with a water jet to break up
the concrete. The robot will then use a vacuum to suck the material away,
splitting it into aggregate, cement and water. The water can be reused in the
system while the aggregate and cement can be reused in concrete once again.
Compare that to the mess left behind
after using heavy machinery to demolish a building. A lot of water is wasted
and the material mostly ends up in landfills.
“Even the rebar is cleaned of
concrete, dust and rust and is ready to be cut and reused immediately,” Haciomeroglu stated. “Every bit of the load-bearing
structure is reusable for new building blocks.”
It all seems too perfect but the
design seems fairly logical. The high-pressure water infiltrates cracks in the
surface peeling off the concrete. The rebar is left in its original shape with
even the rust washed off. A centrifugal decanter then uses centrifugal force to
separate the solid and liquid parts. These are then either packaged and sent
off for reuse or can be reused on site for the new building that will fill the
new empty space. The bots use special omni-directional tracks that can
spin on two different axis meaning it can move in any direction without
actually turning.
Haciomeroglu envisages fleets of
autonomous robots being set to work to strip a building and pretty much left to
get on with it. This is still at concept design stage, however it is
reported that influential organisations are starting to grant attention and
there’s no denying that it is a great idea.
via: [Discovery News]
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