At the press conference on Tuesday morning, in addition to the much-watched iPhone SE and 9.7-inch iPad Pro, Apple also released a robot called Liam, which can completely disassemble an iPhone in 11 seconds. Recently, the foreign media Mashable An exclusive "decryption" of this mysterious robot, let's take a look.
At the moment, I am standing in an inconspicuous warehouse parking lot a few kilometers away from Apple's Cupertino headquarters in California.
Apple used to be a company known for its conservative secrets. However, in recent years, Apple’s important products have been completely “disappeared†several months before the release, but this robot that took Apple’s production in more than three years has It seems that few people know.
"This is Liam."
Only a few employees know its existence
Liam is a huge robot consisting of 29 independent and functional robot arms. But unlike robots that have been used on a large scale in product assembly, Liam's function is to disassemble those iPhones that are damaged or returned.
At the spring new product launch a few days ago, Apple officially showed Liam, but before that, even within Apple, only a few employees knew there was such a product.
The logic of designing Liam's "disassemble" robot seems to be well understood: since Apple's company that designs and assembles the iPhone, in theory, it is also the company that knows how to disassemble the iPhone.
Mission: Handling e-waste
Apple is trying to solve a very difficult problem in the consumer electronics industry through Liam - e-waste.
Most of the "e-waste" will eventually flow to developing countries after a few turns. In these countries, e-waste (especially used batteries) is becoming an increasingly big problem. In the United States, due to the relatively harsh environmental laws and the high demand for “green†products, Apple can solve the problem of recycling iPhones through recycling. However, if it is expanded to the entire international market, a simple recycling plan is obviously not enough.
Traditional technology product recycling methods are often "magnet + pulverizer", which can not completely separate the different parts of the electronic product. After recycling, a pile of "waste" mixed with many materials is often obtained. In contrast, Liam can disassemble used or consumer-returned iPhones into numerous widgets, including SIM cards, batteries, camera modules, and even internal screws. Through such fine separation, Apple can sell them separately to companies that need these materials for reuse according to the materials of the components, instead of smashing the products directly after some traditional electronic waste disposal methods. Go to the dump site for landfill.
Unlike many of Apple's patents and unique features, Apple said, "We hope that competitors can 'plagiarize' Liam. So far, most companies have chosen to bury e-waste directly. No company has tried to pass this kind of Liam. Ways to reuse used materials."
In addition, Apple declined to comment on the cost of manufacturing Liam.
a "large anti-assembly machine"
Apple said that the name Liam was the name that Siege Lions thought of in the early days of development, not the abbreviation of some words (we initially guessed that Liam is the abbreviation of "large inverse assembly machine").
DELL Latitude Series,DELL Latitude,dell latitude 3420,dell latitude 3520
S-yuan Electronic Technology Limited , https://www.syuanelectronic.com