Robot assisted deconstruction of multi-layered façade constructions on the example of external thermal insulation composite systems

The past years have seen major changes in society that have modified the requirements of residential architecture. To meet the new standards while preserving existing built resources, the building stock has to be generally reorganized. Resulting changes to buildings’ layout and structure in turn necessitate changes to the building envelope e.g. modification of openings or construction setups. Within this context, we investigate the automated disassembly of multi-layered façade constructions, specifically thermal insulation systems using expanded polystyrene foam panels. Our approach goes beyond efficient demolition, instead proposing automated deconstruction strategies that allow for effective material recycling due to a high degree of varietal material purity or even reuse of panel elements. The paper describes the development of the robot assisted deconstruction process including robotic setup, motion programming as well as initial experiments. Moreover, the described research results show the demand for agile process development to successfully deal with the unstructured environment of (de-)construction sites. Therefore, force controlled robot motion programming was tested to introduce industrial robots to a new working environment overcoming traditional factory based automation procedures.