Classic demolition implies either explosives and big bada booms à la The 5th Element or massive wrecking balls with Miley Cyrus on top, but the following concept changes all that by sucking the concrete off the walls and turning it into its constituent parts all over again.
The ERO concrete-recycling robot is nothing but a concept for the time being, but there’s no denying that if it were real the world would be a better place. It was envisioned by Omer Haciomeroglu of Umeå Institute of Design for Atlas Copco Rockdrills AB, a Swedish manufacturer of compressors, construction and mining tools and equipment, power tools, and assembly systems, among many others.
ERO, whose name hints at erosion, was featured in the Student Designs section at a competition organized by Industrial Designers Society of America, and won the of 2013 International Design Excellence Award (IDEA). As stated by the designer, the main goal of ERO is to eliminate the waste that results after demolitions. Its way of handling things is energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly.
Omer Haciomeroglu isn’t only against the enormous amounts of energy used in demolitions, but also against using large amounts of water for preventing the dust to spread. The robot that he designed makes the deconstruction process a lot easier, as it eliminates waste, dust and additional separation. The first step is placing ERO inside a building in a strategic point where it starts scanning the environment. When the scan completes, the robot can tell what the best options are in terms of concrete-recycling. This means that it can have several different approaches to how to turn the buildings to dust. First of all, it can pulverize the walls, but besides that, it also features several smart deconstruction modes.
Once the deconstruction process ends, the reclaimed materials can be used as prefab concrete elements once again. All the high-pressurized water used for turning walls into these elements is recycled and can be used for further deconstructions.
One thing that makes ERO similar to power crushers is the amount of noise it would generate. I admit that the concrete-recycling robot is revolutionary on so many levels, but I doubt that it can do all that work and be whisper-silent at the same time. Should it become a reality, however, I am pretty sure that most of us could turn a blind eye to that.
If you liked this post, please check the spray on concrete street art and these concrete barrels beds.
