A comprehensive breakthrough in plastic intelligent sorting technology!

As part of the Federal Government's Cooperative Research Centre project grant, researchers at the University of Sydney's Internet of Things (IoT) and Telecommunications Centre are developing a unique intelligent robot capable of identifying, sorting and separating different types of recyclable waste to increase Recycling of soft plastics
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Recycling robots use artificial intelligence and computer vision to learn how to recognize different forms of recycling waste, effectively learn to see and sort waste to create independent waste streams and maintain the purity of soft plastics so they can be recycled
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Although we have improved in plastic recycling in recent years, plastic landfills are a growing problem
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Soft plastics like plastic wrap and plastic bags are a major contributor to this problem, with 94% of plastics going to landfills in 2016-17
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Soft plastics lack adequate recycling methods because they can easily tangle on waste sorting machinery, cause mechanical failure, and contaminate other recyclable materials such as paper
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Because of this problem, current recycling methods rely on manual sorting of soft plastics, an often repetitive and unsafe job
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Soft plastics, a large contributor to landfills, have long been a challenge for the circular economy and waste management sectors because they have consistently lacked adequate safe sorting methods, the researchers said
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Using the latest IoT technology, they have created a custom robot to solve this problem, enabling most soft plastic waste to be recycled
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The robot will identify household soft plastic bags and distinguish the source of the plastic, separating soft plastics from fully mixed recyclables
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After being separated from other waste, the soft plastic will be used for a variety of purposes, including utilizing the patented Catalytic Hydrothermal Reactor Technology (Cat-HTR) created by Licella Holdings, which can recycle the soft plastic into oil and other valuable chemicals
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This highly innovative material handling process can help expand the availability of Cat-HTR conversion technology
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Sorting technology is an important part of improving the recycling purity and utilization value of waste plastics

Waste plastic, a resource with high economic value and regeneration value, is one of the important players in the field of recycling
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More troublesome is that most of the common plastic waste in life is mixed
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Therefore, for recycling practitioners, how to better purify plastics is very worthy of attention
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On a small scale, this determines whether we can get a good price for plastic recycling
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On a larger scale, this determines the quality of plastic recycling and how much resources we can save
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The price of waste plastics is generally determined by the quality and complexity of waste plastics.
The "cleaner" plastics are more valuable
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Obviously, we cannot intervene to improve the quality of plastics.
What we can do now is to reduce impurities in plastics and increase the value of waste plastics by improving the purity of waste plastics
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Of course, we can improve the quality of recycled plastics during the sorting process
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Intelligence and automation will be the development trend of resource recovery and sorting

As we mentioned above, Sydney's newly developed artificial intelligence solves the problem of soft plastic recycling.
In recent years, with the development of science, artificial intelligence technology has gradually matured and involves the field of renewable resource recycling
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The American NRT company and the French MACHINEX company have recently released their new sorting robots Max-AITM and SamurAITM, which have been installed and used in relevant resource recycling companies respectively, and have achieved good results
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In addition, AI sorting robots can continuously improve through learning, thereby improving overall system performance, ensuring the most accurate identification, and achieving the highest recovery and purity levels
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Sensor technology, communication technology and computer technology constitute the three pillars of modern information technology, which play the roles of "sensory", "nerve" and "brain" respectively in the information system
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The artificial intelligence sorting robot analyzes the composition of the target material through excellent sensor technology, achieves the effect of identifying the type of waste plastic, and uses the robotic arm for high-speed sorting
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It is believed that with the development and popularization of artificial intelligence and sensor technology, intelligence and automation will be the trend of the resource recycling industry in the information age
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