One company in the US state of Colorado has a new lesson for artificial intelligence. And it could help us end the drudgery of sorting our trash. It鈥檚 challenging and repetitive work performed in a noisy environment. These sorters help keep the lines at Alpine Waste & Recycling moving.
鈥淭he people we have are great at what they do,鈥� said Brent Hildebrand, Vice President of Alpine Waste & Recycling. 鈥淭hey sort really well.鈥�
Alpine鈥檚 Brent Hildebrand says that goes as well for one of his newer employees, six months on the job and getting better all the time. He is Clarke the robot.
鈥淪o Clarke, as he鈥檚 working right now, he鈥檚 watching everything that鈥檚 on the line,鈥� said Natanya Horowitz CEO of Amp Robotics. 鈥淎nd as he sees more and more material, he learns more and more.鈥�
Clarke is Natanya Horowitz鈥檚 creation. The founder of Amp Robotics in Colorado used a National Science Foundation grant to build a device that uses artificial intelligence to pluck recyclable products from a conveyor belt. A recycling industry group helped sponsor Clarke鈥檚 effort to identify milk and juice cartons, something new technology now allows robots to do.
鈥淵ou show them thousands of examples of bottles and cans and everything else and they begin to learn what distinguishes them, just like a person might,鈥� said Horowitz. 鈥淪o, it鈥檚 learning certain logos, certain shapes, certain textures are associated with one material over another.鈥�
It鈥檚 not an entirely new idea. The movie robot WALL-E once confronted massive piles of garbage as the last robot on Earth. Other companies have also employed waste-sorting machines. Amp Robotics says its computer vision and machine learning cuts sorting costs. And robots come in handy when labor is scarce.
鈥淚t鈥檚 getting harder and harder to find people and when you do find them, you have to pay them more and more to keep them,鈥� said Hildebrand.
Cartons are Clarke鈥檚 focus now but it won鈥檛 be long before robots are sorting plastic products and things like construction and electronic waste.
For now, the focus is on improving the software and reducing Clarke鈥檚 error rate. His grip still needs some work.
鈥淲e鈥檙e figured out the basics but there鈥檚 always going to be room for improvement,鈥� said Horowitz. 鈥淲e have a long road map of additional features and additional capabilities that we鈥檙e adding.鈥�
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