The factories that Apple uses in Austin, Texas. The business has built its Mac Pro desktop about 20 minutes north of downtown since 2013. The building is 400,000 square feet and is in a maze of industry parks. It’s only a short drive south from the company’s still-under-construction main campus. In recent years, the capital city has become a hub for tech innovation. This is mostly because of the University of Texas at Austin, which is close and has a huge pool of talented people.
In 2019, work began on a new site worth $1 billion. Soon after the first part was finished in 2022, the business announced plans for a second expansion that would end in March 2025. The Austin campus will cover 133 acres, which is about the same size as its 175-acre offices in Cupertino.
The Mac Pro footprint, on the other hand, is directly related to the company’s plan to make more products in the U.S. Moving brought about 900 jobs to the area, where they made the famous “trash can” version of the company’s best desktop. Just before the pandemic, Apple announced that the city would also be where the next model would be made.
Once people get through the security check at the front door, they are met by assembly lines full of hundreds of the big “cheese grater” computers. Beyond this, there are rows and rows of floor-to-ceiling industrial shelving units that hold plain cardboard boxes that are full of the expensive systems.
Drains And Waste
Just past that is a small recycling center. A medium-sized industrial e-waste sortation device is located there. High-powered magnets are used to get metals and rare earth materials from old Apple products that have hit the end of their useful life. Most of the real sorting of e-waste takes place at other e-waste management facilities that are not on-site. Instead, the company is always trying to make the process better, and this method is used to do that.
These kinds of projects are a big part of Apple’s plan to get rid of all carbon from its supply chain by 2030. This effort comes after a similar one to get its global business operations to be carbon neutral. It’s not just Apple. Companies like Microsoft, Samsung, and Google have also said they want to cut down on their pollution.
In the future, robotics will play a bigger and bigger part in these attempts. In the past few years, startups like Amp Robotics and Glacier have come into being. They use automation and AI-based vision systems to make sorting more efficient and help close the loop on electronic trash. While the goal is good, there is still a long way to go in terms of technology and consumer input.
These Are The Skills You Need:
Compared to companies like Amazon, Apple hasn’t done as much with robots that people can see. However, automation has been used in some of Apple’s recycling efforts for more than a decade. Tim Cook began his March 2016 iPad Pro address by talking about the latest steps the company is taking to be more environmentally friendly. Among the stories was Liam, Apple’s most recent attempt to use cutting edge robots to help with sorting. A new version of the robot the company started testing behind the scenes in 2013 was shown off at that event. It was called Liam 2.0.
Liam 1.0 was still a work in progress, which is a good way to describe all of Apple’s robotics work to date. The company now calls the first-generation system a “research project.” It used a Fanuc industrial robotic arm to separate parts on a discarded iPhone 5s. It took Liam 12 minutes to finish.
When you think about the 133 million phones Americans threw away that year, only 11% of them were recycled, a process that takes more than 10 minutes doesn’t seem very useful. Putting Liam 1.0 to work was even harder because the system wasn’t even close to being scalable.
From January 2015 on, Liam 2.0 worked behind the scenes. The system made changes that could be seen and felt. Even though it was smaller than the old system, the new one cut the process time in half, to just 11 seconds.
In a 2016 white paper, Apple said, “The automated disassembly system was custom built for the iPhone 6 and can disassemble 1.2 million iPhone units per year.” “Liam’s output parts are used to study end-processing recycling technologies that can get back materials that can’t be gotten back at the right scale or purity right now.” Liam is an example of how Apple has invested in pre-processing tools.
Liam 2.0 was much more effective than the last version, but it only lasted a short time before it quit in May 2016. Apple would wait another six months before they hired someone.
A Robot That Cost 1.2 Million Dollars To Build
A representative for the business said that all of the robots’ names come from inside jokes. Sometimes, like with Liam, they were made as very questionable nicknames to begin with.
Sarah Chandler, Vice President of Environment and Supply Chain Innovation, tells TechCrunch, “Basically, we’re all just robotics or the environment geeks.”
For Recycling Innovation Engineer Patrick Wieler, this is likely the only part of Apple where geeks get to name things. “They haven’t been named by marketing.”
Even though Apple has since put in place a system called “Dave” to get the Taptic Engine out of devices, I’m sure that neither of them are references to 2001, Arthur C. Clarke’s robotic cautionary story.
There is now 4 seconds of time spent on the process thanks to the new robot.
Daisy, on the other hand, cuts Liam’s total footprint from 29 robots spread out over 100 feet to just four main modules, while also increasing the number of material output streams from 8 to 15. The biggest change, though, is that Liam 2.0 now works with more than one iPhone model, up from just one (the iPhone 6) in Liam 2.0. In the 7.5 years since Daisy came out, Apple has kept that number up to date. It used to only be able to handle 18 types, but now it can handle 29.
The big difference in cycle times between Liam 1.0 and Daisy is partly because the split process has been rethought from the ground up. While the first robot carefully unscrewed the different parts, more recent models use a more forceful method. Now, the robots “punch out” the part. It turns out to be a lot faster to remove a phone from its case. The end result is less attractive, but no one cares what old phones look like. In the end, it’s not being fixed up; it’s being melted down.
Come In To The Four Chambers
Daisy sits on the floor in an area that has been blocked off in front of two rows of tall cardboard boxes that are slowly being filled with small, extracted parts. When it is working, the system is loud, with the sound of metal hitting metal and the hiss of hydraulics. Even though it’s not too loud to wear earplugs (which is always a good idea), I wouldn’t suggest trying to do an interview nearby.
Even though Daisy is much smaller than earlier robots, she is still very big. She is 33 feet long from end to end. Like many industrial robots, its parts are housed in a protective structure. This keeps the big metal system from running into human skin, which is easily hurt. There are still people in the loop, though, and three or four people are in charge of each station. There are four big glass boxes with metal frames that make up the system.
A person puts a bucket full of iPhones into the chute to start the process. Daisy then puts each one on a moving belt one at a time. After that, the image system on board looks at all of the devices. It goes back to the beginning if it finds that someone entered the system face down. Instead of using a robot to turn the device over, this process is repeated until it lands face-down, which is likely to happen 50% of the time.
If the device was put into the system in the right way, images and machine learning work together to figure out the model type, which Daisy then handles correctly. Mitsubishi arms have been put in place of Liam’s Fanuc arms. Similar to most industrial robotic arms, these were first made to work with making cars.
Indeed, that business is decades ahead of everyone else when it comes to adding technology to their processes. The phone is picked up by one robot arm and put on a pad. Then, a second arm picks up the phone and puts it in a metal bracket. Finally, the screen is peeled off the device.
The fog coming from industrial cooling units kept at -80 degrees Celsius (-112 degrees Fahrenheit) makes the second room the most interesting to look at out of the four. Of course, this is a lot cooler than the 32° to 95° F (0° to 35° C) temperature range that Apple says is best for the iPhone. In fact, it’s so cold that the battery glue won’t stick. Daisy slams the battery out after putting the device in very cold weather. At this spot, there is a second person who watches how things are done and gets the used batteries.
Daisy starts to remove the small screw inside the third chamber, which frees the individual part. This is where force of will really counts. Punching is a lot faster than using the robot to take each piece off one by one. When the parts get to the fourth and final chamber, they are scraped by a rotating tool and land on a vibrating screen mesh, which helps sort the parts.
After that, they land on a big, spinning surface, and another person is in charge of sorting the bits into their different parts. Those will be emptied into nearby cardboard boxes, which will then be sent to a factory that turns electronic waste into other materials.
Getting A Hold Of It
In fact, Daisy is mostly made up of off-the-shelf parts, just like Liam. In the field of robotics, this is the usual way to build systems. There is no need to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of it. This is especially true for Daisy, of which two pieces have been made. One of the few parts that were made in-house was the end effectors, which are made to fit iPhones perfectly.
In its early stages, Liam used a pneumatic suction cup method, which has become more popular in the business world over the last ten years or so. When it came to Daisy, though, the company went back to a tight clutch. These systems are more stable than soft robots systems, but they are not as compliant.
That’s very helpful when you’re trying to hold things like fruits and vegetables, which can be very different from one to the next. The benefits of a praise gripper aren’t as strong if your system is meant to pick up things like iPhones that have limited dimensions.
The Austin system takes care of smartphones from North America, while the Breda, Netherlands system takes care of old iPhones from Europe. Asia, Africa, South America, and Oceania don’t have systems like this yet. There are, however, two units (called Dave and Taz) that Apple puts close to its factories in China. The purpose of these devices is to take haptic and audio parts from the phone.
Getting On The Surface
Daisy can take apart as many as 1.2 million iPhones a year at the rate she’s going now. It’s a huge step up from earlier models, but it’s still not nearly as good as the 150 million smartphones that were thrown away in 2023—that’s about 416,000 every day. That, in turn, is a very small amount of the 68 million tons of electronics that were thrown away around the world. About 22% of those were recycled, but the UN says that the rate at which electronics are thrown away is “rising five times faster than documented recycling.”
Recycling robots like Daisy are a good start, but they need to be scaled up a lot more if they want to make a real difference in the $62 billion worth of natural resources that were thrown away last year instead of being recovered.
A lot of the problem is caused by people not knowing how to recycle technology or not wanting to do it. Too many people bury old electronics in drawers (I’m guilty) or just throw them away with the trash.
Chandler says, “I hope you’ve seen our reports.” “We have published websites and other long reports.” Yes, I have, and if you’re still reading, there’s a good chance you have too. On the other hand, most people who buy an iPhone don’t read Apple white papers when they have free time.
“We’re trying to play with messaging and get more resonance to find out what works for people,” Chandler says.
Apple sees Daisy as a kind of advocate for the fact that it recycles. Speed and efficiency aren’t even close to where they need to be, but it’s a big story that brings more attention to the company’s attempts to end its life.
Chandler says that every metric ton of material that is taken from Daisy saves 2,000 metric tons of mine. “I believe we need to keep doing more and more to involve our customers.” That’s why Daisy won’t be able to get as much done today. To make room for [our building tour], she’s moving a little more slowly. That’s worth it, though. That’s how we get our message across.
True proficiency means making systems that run an even wider range of products, in addition to increasing Daisy’s output and maybe even building more robots in new and existing areas. Apple thinks that these systems can be changed to run products that aren’t iPhones, like MacBooks and iPads, but the company won’t say what’s in the works.
Apple has also let other businesses use its Daisy IP rights for free. There are some differences between devices and how they are made, but many of the steps can be used with other smartphones. Apple has talked to some of its competitors about the offer, but no one has yet taken it up.
Longer Life Span
When Daisy started working in November 2016, Apple thought the industrial robot would be up and running for two to three years. After all, the two Liams that came before it were only there for a year or two each. There was a short time when Apple took the robotic arm part of both systems out of service to show how far technology has come in the last ten years.
After 7.5 years, Daisy is still going strong. Apple says that the system’s life is due to its adaptability, as changes to the robot’s software and hardware have made it able to handle more iPhones.
Partnerships with schools like Carnegie Mellon University, a top robotics study center and one of the birthplaces of self-driving cars, helped make some of these improvements possible. That particular partnership began in the year 2019.
Across Apple’s different departments, people also share what they learn a lot.
“There is a dialogue all the time,” says Wieler. “We learn a lot from the automation team that works on the new products because each project brings its own set of problems.” We can build on what they learned there and then teach their teams what we taught them. When we tell them how we programmed Daisy, it makes them think of new ways to automate new goods.
Robotics By Apple
Apple’s recent failure to move forward with its electric car project is said to have inspired the company to look into the extremely difficult field of home robots. Before 2022, it was said that the company was looking into making its products more automated, but it had to give up on the plan as it slowed down work on “Project Titan.”
Before it shut down, the company put together a great group of people with skills in areas like computer vision, machine learning, and robotics that are important for making robots like Daisy work. Apple didn’t say anything specific about how those projects might have affected Daisy’s growth, of course.
Daisy made sense to move to Austin because the company has put a lot of money into the area. Apple can also use the growing robotics school at the University of Texas at Austin, which is in the same city.
“We have strong ties here that go back a long time.” As Chandler points out, “we can do a lot of recycling here because we have a lot of big campuses.” It’s also great for making relationships with schools. We can get a lot of interns. A lot of people come to us to learn more about robots, recycling, and recovering materials.
Apple is a big company, so robots will only play a bigger role in the future. That includes making things, trying them, recycling them, and maybe one day selling them.
Wieler says, “It’s so important to do it in-house.” “Each change taught us something new about automation and took us a big step forward.”
Also Read: For the Next Two Weeks, Apple is Said to Be Giving More Money for Old Iphones
Chandler says, “We need to age Daisy the same way we aged Liam.” You must always push yourself further.
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