Dell's Concept Luna Lets a Robot Recycle Your Old Laptop

When a laptop hits its end of life, because it's old, damaged or just not needed any longer, a lot of good parts can get thrown out with the bad or useless ones. For Dell, a prototype called Concept Luna is designed to address this issue, by making laptops extremely easy to disassemble and their individual parts easy to replace or reuse. 

Watch this: Dell's Concept Luna Pitches Robotic Laptop Recycling

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If this sounds familiar, that's because we saw an earlier iteration of Luna last year, also announced just before CES. One year on, the new version of Luna is very easy to disassemble, using a simple handheld tool to open the chassis. After that, the keyboard, touchpad, display, fans, speakers, motherboard and other components can all be removed by hand. Once the case is opened, everything inside has toolless access, and it's easy to swap out parts. 

The first thing you might think of for a product like this is the ability to upgrade parts – for example, adding a new CPU or GPU to a laptop. For Dell, however, the primary purpose is to assist in recycling and reusing parts, even taking still-good components from an old laptop and reusing them in a new laptop. 

In addition to popping the Luna open by hand, Dell also showed off a setup with two industrial robot arms, programmed to do the disassembly, and to also diagnose and sort the parts inside, keeping the still-working ones and discarding the useless ones. 

"The exciting addition of robotics and automation," Dell said, "serve as a catalyst to accelerate efficient device disassembly, measure component health and remaining usability, and better understand which components can be reused, refurbished or recycled – so nothing goes to waste."

Of course, you shouldn't expect to see this in your next XPS, Inspiron or Alienware laptop. Just like with last year's initial prototype, Dell said, "Luna is 'just a concept' right now" and a "long-term vision for how we achieve an even greater business and societal impact through circular design practices."