Project uses artificial intelligence to identify, grab, and separate food and beverage cartons

The Carton Council of North America says that it has been conducting a pilot program that uses artificial intelligence to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of carton recycling.

Its research concluded that the system was 50 per cent more productive.

Through a collaboration led by the Carton Council with two Denver-based companies, AMP Robotics and Alpine Waste & Recycling, a robotic system has learned to identify the wide variety of food and beverage cartons in order to grab and separate them from the recycling stream.

The AMP Cortex, nicknamed “Clarke” after the sci-fi author and futurist Arthur C. Clarke, has spider-like arms with specially designed grippers to pick up and separate cartons at a materials recovery facility.

Clarke was installed in late 2016 and, through fine-tuning and adjustments, has achieved a pickup rate of 60 cartons per minute. This is a considerable increase from the human average of 40 picks per minute.  [Read more…] about Carton recycling robot 50 per cent more productive, claim researchers