Automatic separating system of transparent plastic bottle for reuse

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Recently, there has been a growing trend to promote recycling society in Japan. This study therefore aim to realize an automatic separating system of plastic bottles for reuse.In 2005, we tried to construct to the pro type system to measure the shape and to identify the material of the transparent object, which consist of laser light and ultrasonic wave. The transparent object has the primitive shapes, which are a cylinder, a rectangle prism, a square pyramid, and a sphere. First, we designed and built both the laser rangefinder system, which consist of the 6-axis robot and the imaging system by our own making and can measure the transparent object such as plastic bottle. From experimental results, it is clear that the prototype laser rangefinder is effective to measure the shape of the transparent objects. Next, we made the prototype measurement system using the ultrasonic sensor array, which can measure the shape and identify the material of the transparent object. The prototype measurement system has allow to identify the shape of the primitive objects.In 2006, we made the combined system of laser rangefinder and the ultrasonic measurement system. We verified the usefulness of the combined system by experiment. The measured object is commercially available plastic bottles. From experimental results show the effectiveness of the measurement and the identification of the area of interest.In concluding, the research attained the originally planned object.