Automated, Digitised and Decentralised Circular Waste Sorting

既然所有的材料都有价值，浪费就不应该存在——只是材料放错了地方。然而，在英国，仍有4.85亿吨的p/a材料没有得到回收利用，而是被送往垃圾填埋场，出口到国外，甚至更糟的是最终流入海洋。目前，回收行业依赖于大型材料回收设施（MRF），将可回收物分类为可用材料（纯度=价值）。然而，这需要多年的规划，大量的资本投资，许多昂贵的机器，仍然需要一个机构的劳动力来手动分类材料。规模较小的设施完全使用人工来分类废物，因为最低限度的工作MRF的资本成本太高。通过这个项目，Recycleye将通过创建一个快速部署，分散，可扩展，数字化和全自动分类解决方案-迷你材料回收设施（mini- mrf）来颠覆废物管理行业。Recycleye已经利用深度学习和人工智能的最新进展开发了一种最先进的计算机视觉系统，能够根据材料类型和品牌对物品进行分类。该项目的主要目标是用机械臂来增强这个视觉系统。一个传送带将废物运送到系统中，视觉单元将检测不同类型的可回收物。然后，使用机械臂将垃圾分类到各自的堆中，提供分类/纯可回收物流，然后可以重新注入英国经济/出售给再处理商。该项目将专注于复制人类独特的能力，这是迄今为止机器无法匹敌的。眼睛：例如，Recycleye视觉系统能够理解一块纸板是披萨盒（因此可能是食物污染），即使它被撕破了，被另一件东西半掩着，并且被污垢覆盖。机械臂：机械臂是去除目标材料的最有效方法，而不必依赖于材料的物理特性（密度、铁度、形状因素等）。该项目将建造并测试一个完全可操作的迷你磁磁共振炉，为大规模生产做好准备。通过开发回收行业迫切需要的低成本和数据驱动的分类解决方案，Recycleye正在建设英国未来的废物管理基础设施，并加速该国向循环经济的过渡。

Given all material has value, waste should not exist -- simply materials in the wrong place. Yet, 485m tonnes of material p/a is still not recycled in the UK but sent to landfill, exported abroad, or even worse ends up in the ocean. Currently, the recycling industry relies on large-scale material recovery facilities (MRF) which sort recyclables into usable material (purity = value). However, these require years of planning, large capital investment, numerous expensive machines and still use an agency workforce to manually sort materials. Smaller-scale facilities use manual labour entirely to sort waste as the capital cost for a minimal working MRF is too high.With this project, Recycleye will disrupt the waste management industry by creating a rapidly deployable, decentralized, scalable, digital & fully-automated sorting solution - mini material recovery facilities (mini-MRF). Recycleye has already developed a state-of-the-art computer vision system using recent advances in deep learning and AI capable of classifying items by material type and brand. The project's key objectives are to augment this vision-system with a robotic arm. A conveyor will carry waste towards the system where the vision unit will detect the different types of recyclables. Then, using a robotic arm the waste types will be sorted into respective piles providing a sorted/pure stream of recyclables that can then be re-injected into the UK economy/ sold to reprocessors.The project will focus on replicating uniquely human abilities - which machines have up until now not been able to match. The eye: The Recycleye vision system is able to, for example, understand that a piece of cardboard is pizza box (and hence likely food contaminated) even if it is torn, half-hidden by another item and covered in dirt. The arm: A mechanical arm is the most efficient way of removing target materials without having to rely on a material's physical characteristics (densities, ferrousity, form factor, etc). The project will build and test a fully operational mini-MRF ready for mass production.By developing the low-cost and data-driven sorting solution the recycling industry desperately needs, Recycleye is building the UK's future waste management infrastructure and accelerating the country's transition towards a circular economy.