Can AI Robots help with the global issue of increasing landfill?
As reported in Energy Live News today, Carling Spelhaug of AMP Robotics thinks that they can add value to the issue of cleaning up landfill using AI and robotics.
Stating that Robots can help do the jobs humans should never have to do, AMP Robotics uses AI to sift through recycling to ensure that materials that should be recycled are picked out and don’t end up in landfill.
Carling said: “At AMP Robotics, we are using computer vision and deep learning to automate the sorting process of mixed material streams.
“Typically we put everything in a bin and it’s sent to what’s called the materials recovery facility and everything there needs to be sorted into separate commodities so that it can be sent to end markets where people want to buy it to make it into new materials.
“And the way that this industry has historically run has been on manual labour. So it’s a dull, dirty, dangerous task and one that is ripe for automation.”
This doesn’t stop at the UK, the issue is global with America in particular having a poor rate of recycling at just 32%. In the UK we have an ambition of hitting 50% by 2030.
AMP Robotics suggested process would be less labour intensive with all waste going down a belt and a camera sitting above the belt would highlight the material to be recycled real time and guide a robotic arm to pick and place the item in the correct bin.
Carling goes on to say “Typically its about 80 picks a minute but it can get up to 120 picks and that is compared with a human who, best case scenario, is about 40 to 50, maybe 60, picks per minute.
“And its allowed the people that work at these facilities to be shifted to different types of roles, that are focused on technical skills, maintenance and other critical roles. We’re letting the robots handle the real dirty parts of the process that are dangerous and a hazard for humans.”
This is another great evolution and proof that we are adapting to new processes using the latest technology to reach our net zero targets.