Applying Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision to Open Source Distributed Recycling and Additive Manufacturing of Waste Plastic

人们会为了钱而回收利用。在那些用现金购买罐头和瓶子的地方，金属和玻璃回收取得了巨大的成功。可悲的是，回收塑料的现金奖励较少，只有9%的塑料垃圾被回收。其余的则污染垃圾填埋场或环境。但现在，有几项技术已经成熟，人们可以通过3D打印将废旧塑料直接回收到有价值的产品中，而成本只有正常成本的一小部分。人们正在使用自己的回收塑料来制作装饰品和礼物、家居和花园产品、配饰和鞋子、玩具和游戏、体育用品和小玩意，这些都是数以百万计的免费设计。这种方法被称为分布式回收和添加剂制造，简称DRAM。DRAM的第一步是用肥皂和水对塑料进行分类和清洗。接下来，塑料需要被研磨成颗粒。然后，这些颗粒要么使用Recyclebots(废塑料挤出机)变成3D打印细丝，并用于低成本的3D打印机，要么通过融合颗粒直接进行3D打印。我们的研究表明，DRAM不仅对环境更好，而且对制造自己产品的人来说也是高额利润。使用开源设计来生产您自己的产品比购买它们更具成本效益。如果你使用回收塑料，你可以比商业同等产品节省99%以上。这是令人兴奋的，但DRAM是有限的，目前仅由精通技术的首次采用者使用，因为五个挑战：1)没有简单的方法来确定塑料是否可以用于DRAM，2)没有低成本的方法来粉碎薄塑料，如家里的PET水瓶，3)回收机器人用不均匀的废物原料制造坏丝材，4)低成本3D打印机在精确数字复制设计方面遭受一系列故障，5)大型3D打印机贵得令人望而却步，故障更多。这项研究计划的长期目标是克服与开源DRAM系统中的塑料和其他废物升级为最终产品相关的这五个挑战：1)开发一种基于开源熔体流动指数的低成本快速评估DRAM的废物的方法；2)开发一台桌面能效的、主要是3D打印的粉碎机，能够将薄塑料容器渲染成薄片；3)集成计算机视觉自动反馈系统，以控制回收机器人挤出的3D打印细丝，使其更加均匀；4)集成开源人工智能程序和计算机视觉来实时修复3D打印错误；5)使用回收机器人作为悬挂式电缆3D打印机的打印机。总而言之，这一智能DRAM系统将有助于降低DRAM的成本和复杂性，使每个人，包括那些生活在与世隔绝的偏远社区、土著或进行军事/人道主义部署的人-都可以轻松地使用废塑料来制造他们需要的产品。

People will recycle for money. In places where cash is offered for cans and bottles, metal and glass recycling has been a great success. Sadly, there are fewer cash incentives for recycling plastic and only 9% of plastic waste is recycled. The rest pollutes landfills or the environment. But now, several technologies have matured that allow people to recycle waste plastic directly by 3D printing it into valuable products, at a fraction of their normal cost. People are using their own recycled plastic to make decorations and gifts, home and garden products, accessories and shoes, toys and games, sporting goods and gadgets from millions of free designs. This approach is called distributed recycling and additive manufacturing, or DRAM for short. The first step in DRAM is to sort and wash the plastic with soap and water. Next, the plastic needs to be ground into particles. Then the particles are either turned into 3D printer filament using recyclebots (waste plastic extruders), and used on low-cost 3D printers or it is directly 3D printed by fusing particles. Our research has shown DRAM is not only better for the environment, but it is also highly profitable for people making their own products. Using open source designs to produce your own products is more cost-effective than purchasing them. If you used recycled plastic you can save over 99% from the commercial equivalent. This is exciting, however DRAM is limited, and is currently only used by technically-savvy first adopters because of five challenges: 1) There is no easy way to identify if plastic can be used for DRAM, 2) there is no low-cost method of shredding thin plastic like PET water bottles at home, 3) recyclebots make bad filament from non-uniform waste feedstocks, 4) low-cost 3D printers suffer from a range of failures for exact digital replication of designs, and 5) large 3D printers are prohibitively expensive and fail more often. The long-term objective of this research program is to overcome these five challenges related to the upcycling plastic and other wastes into final products in open source DRAM systems by: 1) developing a low-cost rapid method to evaluate waste for DRAM based on an open source melt flow index; 2) developing a desktop energy-efficient mostly 3D printable shredder capable of rendering thin plastic containers to flakes; 3) integrating a computer vision automatic feedback system to control recyclebot-extruded 3D printing filament from waste materials so it can be made more uniform; 4) integrating an open source artificial intelligence program and computer vision to fix 3D printing errors in real time; and 5) using recyclebots as printers for hanging cable 3D printers. All together this smart DRAM system will help drive the cost and complexity of DRAM down so that everyone including those living in an isolated and remote communities, indigenous or those doing military/humanitarian deployments - can easily use waste plastic to make products that they need.