Carnegie Mellon recycling robot may help keep costs down by tearing apart old electronics

PITTSBURGH — With prices of everything going up, recycling helps keep prices down.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute are doing what they can by developing a robot that, in seconds, takes apart old electronics. It helps get to the gold, silver, and other valuable and recyclable materials inside.

The robot is large, loud, powerful, good for the environment, and possibly your wallet.

CMU Senior Systems Scientist Matt Travers has worked on the robot for years.

“So, we’re specifically focusing on doing disassembly of flat panel displays, so things like televisions and computer monitors.”

Landfills are full of old televisions and flat panels that contain a bunch of materials like gold, copper, and silver. They also contain materials that aren’t produced in the United States. But getting to those materials isn’t easy.

“So, when you go to actually do the disassembly on the displays, the thing that takes the most time if you were to do it manually is undoing the individual screws. There are probably about 20 to 25 individual screws,” Travers said.

The robot removes them in seconds, much faster than a human can.

“Instead of unscrewing the screws, fasteners will actually come and use kinetics basically to punch out the screws very quickly,” Travers added.

It’s all about speeding up the process of taking apart e-waste and getting to the materials that can be recycled much faster, including the precious metals, aluminum, and plastic. All that can be reused, which in the end, could keep prices of items a little lower.

“It’s the idea that I’m taking plastic out of my Samsung TV and eventually using that same plastic to go back into a Samsung TV,” Travers said. “The plastics, metal, a lot of things, critical materials, things like gallium and indium that you find in the thin film transistors and the actual screen on the flat panel displays. There is no domestic source for them.”

Travers is working on the robot with Rubicon Robotics. Now it’s ready and headed to a Pennsylvania company. The hope is that more will follow.

“It’s like a proud dad, I guess. It’s like I’m shipping it off to go to its first facilities in State College and I have this fear and apprehension,” Travers said. “I want it to do well. I don’t have kids, so I imagine this is what it’s like to send a kid to college.”

The group is focusing on old flat-panel TVs right now because there are just so many of them available. The plan is to use the robot for other electronics in the near future.

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