Robotics: A new way to demolish buildings

The blog Technabob featured a novel technological innovation that could transform the building demolition industry.

Inspired by the movie "Wall-E," Swedish student designer Omer Haciomeroglu designed a robot prototype, called the ERO Concrete Recycling Robot, that uses water jets to break up concrete structures and then sucks up the water and debris for reuse and recycling.

Haciomeroglu envisions a fleet of these robots scanning a job site and carefully taking down a structure and recycling its components. For instance, the clean aggregate could be sent to concrete precast stations for reuse, and the rebar can be cut on the spot for reuse, writes Technabob.

Haciomeroglu calls it "smart deconstruction" versus the "brutal pulverizing" that's common in the field.

Check out Haciomeroglu's prototype (Click here for more on ERO):

More on the ERO Concrete Recycling Robot.

Samuel S. Unger, RA, MCR, SLCR, MBA, is the Americas Real Estate Leader for Ernst & Young, LLP, Atlanta. He also serves as president of the CoreNet Global Atlanta chapter. In addition to managing 6.8 million square feet of real estate in North and South America, his responsibilities include real estate strategy for area practices, management of external professional alliances, requirements definition, business case development and approval, real estate negotiation and lease development, and oversight of construction projects for the portfolio. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College, an MLA and MArch from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from Temple University.

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