Building Eating Robot

The future of demolition. Robots that will literally eat away at buildings...

Demolition of high rise structures is messy to say the least. Demolition in densely populated areas can be very hazardous, and the amount of machinery and explosives necessary to demolish a building can be very expensive. But what if there was another way? Well, a Turkish student by the name of Omer Hciomeroglu might just have a better idea.

Haciomeroglu won the 2013 International Design Excellence Award for mechanical design from the Industrial Designers Society in America with a robot that can potentially eat concrete and erase buildings without a trace, while 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 will be programmed to scan a building and plan out the most efficient route before blasting the walls with a water jet to break up the concrete. The robot will then use a vacuum to suck the material away, in effect eating the cement. It will then split the material into aggregate, cement, and water. The water can be reused in the system while the aggregate and cement can be reused in concrete.

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 good to be true, but the demolition process is 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 a new building that will stand in place of the old one.

Haciomeroglu envisions fleets of autonomous robots being sent to work striping buildings throughout cities across the world. This concept is still at design stage, however it is being reported that the project has caught the eye of several influential organisations, and there is no denying that it is in itself a great idea.