Recycling Robotics

If it works well, a very useful thing.  So when are we getting sorting, folding and putting clothing away?

MIT’s bot sifts through trash to do your recycling for you

Engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a new recycling robot that’s capable of automating the process of sifting through trash to distinguish between paper, plastic and metal items. In doing so, it could automate a dull — but entirely necessary — job that few people would want to carry out by hand if there was another option available.

“Although single-stream recycling is really convenient for people, it’s actually a time-consuming and expensive ordeal, requiring significant human labor,” Lillian Chin, a CSAIL Ph.D. student who worked on the project, told Digital Trends. “In developing countries, people have to pick out the recyclable materials from normal waste which can be quite hazardous. [But] even in the U.S., with more automated recycling centers, people are still needed to double-check the machine’s output and manually pick out unrecyclable objects like car engines and plastic bags.”