Publications / 2024 Proceedings of the 41st ISARC, Lille, France

Assessing the Viability of Robotic Disassembly of Building Components for Resource Recovery

Christopher Rausch, Seungah Suh, Nikiforos Repousis, Nathan Titterington, Han Nguyen
Pages 1048-1056 (2024 Proceedings of the 41st ISARC, Lille, France, ISBN 978-0-6458322-1-1, ISSN 2413-5844)
Abstract:

The transition towards a circular economy will, in large part, necessitate the disassembly and recovery of components from existing building stock. Robotic disassembly has emerged as a technique in other (non-building) industries as a method for efficient and scalable resource recovery. Since robotic disassembly has yet to achieve a similar level of maturity in the building industry, this paper presents an assessment framework towards this aim. This framework harmonizes the demonstrable capabilities of robotic systems (via literature synthesis and currently available hardware) with suitable deconstruction applications (using a case study of a large institutional building). The results yield strategic paths forward for enabling robotic disassembly of building components.

Keywords: robotics, circular economy, deconstruction, sustainability, automation, collaborative robot