Prototyping an AI-powered robotic picker for sorting shredded aluminum

ECCycle Solutions在加拿大各地运营多个资产回收和电子电气设备回收设施**。ECCycle Solutions是一家私人所有的加拿大公司，拥有400多名员工和300公吨**的日处理能力，在所有地点拥有超过350,000平方英尺的仓储和处理空间。**传统上，在废弃电子电气设备(WEEE)回收设施中，过时的电子产品**被粉碎，以释放他们的材料。这样做的目的是根据材料类型**将这些切碎的碎片分离，以生产纯商品。为了做到这一点，使用了各种分选技术**来分离这些材料，然而，由于这些技术的低效，污染很普遍。为了**解决这种污染，工人们从材料流中手动移除部件。这个过程费力、耗时、单调、重复，而且成本效益不高。**Conestogas为该项目提出的解决方案是开发一种拾取-n-Place机器人作为机械拾取器，它**能够利用卷积神经网络(CNN)对粉碎的电子产品进行分类。美国有线电视新闻网将**“训练”机器人，使其模仿人类操作员的能力，并根据经验进行“学习”。这将导致提高纯度和处理速度，并将使大部分劳动力部署到**其他任务，这将导致处理成本降低，并提高盈利能力。

eCycle Solutions operates multiple asset recovery and electronics and electrical equipment recycling facilities**across Canada. eCycle Solutions is privately held, Canadian owned with over 400 employees and 300 metric**tonnes of daily processing capacity, with over 350,000 sq/ft of warehousing and processing space across all sites.**Traditionally, at Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) recycling facilities, outdated waste electronics**are shredded in order to liberate their materials. The objective is to then separate these shredded pieces based**on their material type to produce pure commodities. To accomplish this, a variety of sorting technologies are used**to separate these materials, however, contamination is prevalent due to inefficiencies in these technologies. To**address this contamination, workers manually remove pieces from the material stream. This process is labourintensive,**time-consuming, monotonous, repetitive, and not cost effective.**Conestogas proposed solution for this project is to develop a pick-n-place robot as a mechanical picker, which**is capable of sorting shredded waste electronics utilizing a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The CNN will**"train" the robot so that it will mimic the capability of the human operator and "learn" based on experience. This**will result in increased purity rates and processing speeds, and will enable much of the labour force to deployed to**other tasks, which will lead to reduced processing costs, and increased profitability.