FANUC Partners with Recycleye to Automate Recycling

Robotics manufacturer FANUC has partnered with intelligent waste management start-up Recycleye. For the past year, Recycleye has combined its AI computer vision technology with FANUC’s experience in automation to deploy and scale Recycleye Robotics, an AI-powered robotic waste-picking system.

Recycleye Robotics performs the physical tasks of identifying, picking and placing material, at a rate of 55 successful picks per minute, reports Recycleye. The solution automates current manual operations and enables facilities to double their total throughput, according to the company. FANUC’s team of automation engineers designed Recycleye Robotics to weigh 75 percent less than existing robotic waste pickers. The plug-and-play installation is designed to eliminate the need for retrofitting.

Recycleye Robotics is powered by Recycleye Vision, an AI vision system, which has been deployed across the UK and French markets. It is designed to exceed human vision in identifying and classifying all items on waste streams by material, object and brand.  Recycleye Vision works to learn new object detection, enabling the robotic waste-picking system to adapt to changing waste composition without manual upgrades.

The modular robotic picking system has been deployed at two UK material recovery facilities on plastic and paper sorting lines, and deployments in France are scheduled for late 2021. FANUC will leverage its expertise to lead the global rollout of Recycleye robotic pickers.