Demolishing buildings the traditional way - with dynamite and wrecking balls - is undoubtedly fun, but a touch messy and impractical.
Now a California State University graduate, Omer Haciomeroglu, may have come up with a beautifully elegant solution: the ERO Concrete De-Construction Robot.
Rather than simply smash down concrete buildings, Haciomeroglu's device uses high pressure water to break down concrete which it then sucks up.
The ERO Concrete De-Construction Robot
The water is re-used while the waste concrete is packaged and sent off to be re-used as building material.
The technique has numerous advantages. It uses less water, the concrete is more readily re-usable and it practically eliminates dust and pollution associated with regular building destruction.
Haciomeroglu envisages fleets of autonomous robots being set to work to strip a building and pretty much left to get on with it. And the beauty of Haciomeroglu's design doesn't stop there. The bots use special omni-directional tracks that can spin on two different axis meaning it can move in any direction without actually turning (see video below).
The design is still in the concept phase with no guarantee they will go into production but there is denying how clever the idea is.