Robotics and artificial intelligence offer tremendous opportunities to automate tasks in many industries. In Colorado a pilot program led by the Carton Council, AMP Robotics and Alpine Waste & Recycling is teaching robots to identify and then pick food and beverage cartons.
The Carton Council, a trade body composed of four major carton manufacturers explained that AMP’s Cortex robot continually learns to recognise the various types of food and beverage cartons, allowing for the system to meet accuracy levels of existing solutions. This learned information can be transferred to robots at other MRFs.
In this project the system has learned to identify the wide variety of food and beverage cartons in order to grab and separate them from the recycling stream.
Launched in 2015, AMP is based in Bolder, Colorado and applies machine learning and robotic technology to the recycling process. "AMP" stands for Autonomous Manipulation and Perception. According to the company it is a scalable robotic system that reduces costs and enables “smart” recycling facilities. The system is a combination of art computer vision and machine learning with robots that can identify and pick recyclable materials from a conveyor belt. A typical AMP deployment fits on existing recycling lines, with no retrofit costs, and is claimed to reduce sorting costs by over 50%.
At the Alpine Waste & Recycling facility the system has specially designed grips to pick up and separate the cartons, which are sold and made into new paper products and green building materials. It has the ability to sort at super-human speeds, diverting material for re-processing that might otherwise be lost to a landfill.
Nicknamed “Clarke”, after the sci-fi author and futurist Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, the AMP Cortex has spider-like arms with specially designed grippers to pick up and separate cartons at a materials recovery facility (MRF). Clarke was installed in late 2016 and, through fine-tuning and adjustments, has achieved a pickup rate of 60 cartons per minute – a human averages around 40 picks per minute.
“Everything Clarke has learned about identifying cartons can be transferred to robots at other MRFs. We are excited to bring innovation to carton recycling and believe this technology has widespread implications for the recycling industry, as it can be adapted to other materials,” commented Jason Pelz, vice president of recycling projects for the Carton Council of North America and vice president, environment, for Tetra Pak cluster Americas.
The project was possible through a grant from the Carton Council. Ultimately, the Carton Council and AMP Robotics hope to duplicate the success of Clarke at other MRFs as an innovative, cost-effective, long-term solution to sort cartons.
“Clarke provides a new and exciting approach to sorting recyclables. Currently there is nothing out there that does what this system does,” said Matanya Horowitz, founder of AMP Robotics in Denver. “Clarke can be a cost-effective way for facilities to introduce new packaging that does not always have a large volume. Additionally, unique grippers can be developed to identify and pick contaminants, which is one of the biggest issues our industry currently faces.”
Jason Pelz, vice president of recycling projects for the Carton Council of North America concluded: “Clarke greatly expands opportunities for the carton industry as we work to increase the efficiency of carton recycling and, ultimately, divert more cartons from landfills.”
