This system, called Recycleye Robotics, is said to have increased sorting accuracy by up to 12% and improved line output by up to 10%.
Recycleye Robotics uses AI-powered computer vision to identify every single item in complex waste streams. The Fanuc LR Mate robot then automatically separates those recyclables into different material classes such as plastics, aluminium, paper and cardboard. It is expected to operate 24/7, picking up to 33,000 items per robot over a 10-hour shift.
Chief technical officer Peter Hedley said: “In the early days of our journey, we worked with the MTC. They recommended that we speak to Fanuc when we were looking for our robot partner and from day one, we knew we’d made the right choice. “The Fanuc LR Mate 200 iD/4SC is the perfect accompaniment to our vision system. We were looking to bring new technology into a very established, traditional industry. Although mostly reliant on manual pickers, any robots already being used to sort dry, mixed recyclables tended to be large, heavy Delta robots. The ability to retrofit our lightweight system into customers’ existing lines at a reasonable price point was therefore crucial.”
The compact, short arm, mini robot can integrate into confined spaces. As a result, the Recycleye team can install a system over a weekend, with no need for the facility to shut down or operations to be suspended.
Hedley continued: “In addition, the Fanuc LR-Mate is ultra-efficient, using five times less energy than a Delta robot. And thanks to its sophisticated sensors, there’s no wasted travel – if it’s not gripping anything, it won’t move to the bin. Reliability was another a key factor for us. It can operate 24/7 for eight years and still come back to the same millimetre point it has been told to move to.”
Additionally, Recycleye’s technology is expected to offer benefits for materials recycling facilities (MRF). A recent report by the CIWM revealed that 60% of survey respondents had struggled to recruit staff in the past year, forecasting 89,000 vacancies across the waste and recycling sector by 2028.
“The LR Mate robot can pick as accurately as a human worker, and the vision system is as accurate as a human eye,” Hedley explained. “Robots don’t need to take a break, don’t slow down or get tired, and don’t leave the job or need replacing. This is crucial as it can be very hard to find manual workers for waste picking. Recycleye Robotics is more consistently accurate than a human worker and can work safely alongside human employees, thanks to its safety guarding. It can also easily handle the hazardous materials that are routinely found in sorting facilities, which can injure human pickers. It’s therefore an ideal complement to the existing workforce.”
Another benefit of MRFs is that materials that are sorted to the highest purity will command a higher price. Recycleye Robotics is usually used at the quality assurance stage of the recycling process, comprising positive picking (any recyclables that have been missed) and negative picking (removing any contaminants such as plastics in an aluminium line). This boosts sorting accuracy, increasing purity. The system has a transparent traceability function that scans every item and visualises the resulting data on a dashboard.