University of Massachusetts Grads Show Off their AI-Powered Robotic Trash Sorter

SEATTLE (Waste Advantage): If consumers confused about recycling rules are instigating the contamination problem, Somervillie-based robotics startup rStream believes they can solve it by using artificial intelligence to sort trash and recycling instead. “Our objective is to make equipment that can sort of waste and recyclables,” said Ian Goodine, co-founder of rStream Ian Goodine. “That could be to service the function of separating single stream into various commodities that can ultimately be packaged and sold for remanufacturing. The other function which we’re doing here today is actually pre-sorting.”

rStream has piloted its automated trash-sorting AI at the UMass dining commons and the UMass Waste Recovery and Transfer Facility, practicing its identification and separation of plastic, paper and cardboard. The more data to fine-tune its  algorithm, the better rStream’s robot technology can produce a cleaner recycled material for waste companies to sell, leading to a better recyclable product and lowering the amount of waste sent to landfills each year.

“We’ve all experienced that feeling of staring at the waste bin, not knowing where to put the thing,” Goodine said. “Multiply that by 50,000 people every day, and there’s a lot of missed opportunities for the sustainable recovery of those materials.” Using artificial intelligence’s ability to analyze photographs, rStream’s robot views each piece of trash inserted into the trailer through a camera, and attempts to match that image with other depictions of trash in its dataset. If the computer correlates an item with one of the recyclable materials in its database, it redirects it to be recycled.

Courtesy: www.wasteadvantagemag.com