Robots that can sort recycling

[Still Waters]

Every year trash companies sift through an estimated 68 million tons of recycling, which is the weight equivalent of more than 30 million cars.

A key step in the process happens on fast-moving conveyor belts, where workers have to sort items into categories like paper, plastic and glass. Such jobs are dull, dirty, and often unsafe, especially in facilities where workers also have to remove normal trash from the mix.

With that in mind, a team led by researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has developed a robotic system that can detect if an object is paper, metal, or plastic.

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-robots-recycling.html