The Future Recycling Machine - Daosheng Wang, Yihan Li

Industry experts estimate that U.S. consumers throw away 400 million units of electronic equipment per year.

The future recycling machine consists of robots to scan and collect certain wastes and materials and large containers functioning as factories to store, recycle and transform wastes and materials to raw materials ready-to-use, and assemble them into final products.

Each recycling machine will be assigned to a certain type of product to manufacture, such as electronic products, cars, robots, and etc. The machine will calculate the amount of materials needed for production, like metals, plastics, or electronic wastes, and assign robots to search and collect needed materials. Then the robots transport them to the machine, and the machine recycle them into components and finally assemble them into assigned products. The robots which search and collect wastes on the streets are also able to process organic and paper wastes on site, if needed.

The recycling machine will also function as a self-sustainable building, as to rebuild components of robots and building components if the robots or building itself is broken. The recycling machine could be in private use, rented by companies to manufacture certain products, or in public use, managed by cities or governments to control the extra wastes produced in urban areas.

This is a rough model we imagine the recycling machine looks like. The outer shell receives and processes the materials the robots transport in. The adjacent layer puts the processed raw materials into components, and the inner shell assembles the components into products and ultimately stores the products in the very center of the machine.