Sorting recycling can be a real pain for workers, both because of safety reasons and the sheer monotony of it. Using robots to do the sourcing would be a great alternative, but they don’t have the sense of touch to be able to tell the difference between a can and a cardboard tube. That is, until now.
MIT researchers have developed a recycling robot, RoCycle, that uses sensors in its hands to determine the nature of an item and sort it accordingly. A strain sensor gauges an object’s size, while pressure sensors determine the object’s material by how much it squishes. The fingers are made out of auxetics, which are structures that widen when stretched. These auxetics can also twist, enabling the robot to perform more dynamic movements. Since it doesn’t depend on vision, it can distinguish a metal object from one that simply looks like it’s metal by sensing its conductivity. While there are some refinements needed, the technology could potentially free waste workers to deal with safer, more pleasant tasks while reducing the amount of recyclable materials that wind up in landfills.
