The company’s Recycler robot uses data from a combination of visual sensors, metal detectors, weight measurements and tactile feedback from a robotic arm to pick out likely pieces of refuse and categorise them.
Through trial and error its machine learning software has been taught to recognise around a dozen types of material, including different plastics. And it can pluck out concrete, metal and wood from a stream of waste as it moves along a conveyor belt.
For more ambiguous types of waste, such as a piece of plywood with nails driven through it, the robot uses a spectrometer to recognise objects based on the unique patterns of light they reflect. This means the robot can distinguish the type of waste based on its colour and drop it into the appropriate bin.
Garbage-sorting robot gets its hands dirty – tech – 06 April 2011 – New Scientist
– ideally we’d not only deploy these in every rubbish dump in the world, but start digging up every land fill site too.. that’s valuable stuff down there, basically for free.
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 