The robot solving America’s trash crisis | Hard Reset
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- Опубліковано 23 вер 2022
- This robot sorts trash with 99% accuracy.
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Americans produce about five pounds of waste per person per day. Over 90% of this waste is recoverable in some way.
The massive amount of waste needs to be sorted, and robots powered by artificial intelligence can be trained to sort trash accurately.
The AI's core technology is a vision system that is able to recognize specific pieces of garbage, no matter how mangled or dirty it might be.
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This company is tackling Kuwait’s ‘tire graveyard’ problem by tire recycling
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Why is Singapore making beer from recycled wastewater?
► www.freethink.com/environment...
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Do you think AI can help tackle our trash problem?
YES
yes if Trash is not = Human
Absolutly not. The problem is to much trash and with that no AI can help.
@@Steakbroetchen so pessimistic. think of a solution for the problem then.
@@ayoubthegreat The solution is really easy: Produce less waste.
When he said “whatever those changes are, i dont think we’re looking at a very long time period; Not fifty years but ten years.” I cried a few happy tears
This seems pretty amazing. Now it’s about money, scaling and convincing people it works.
Govt should pay for it
@@shrin210 Good start. Everytime a shampoo bottle, plastic bag or CD is made they should have to pay into a recycling fund that covers the costs associated with that product. A template amount calculated to cover everything from cleaning staff on our streets to massive recycling centers. If they make products that are easier to recycle, they will have to pay less per product.
Convincing people it works is likely priority #1 for everybody working there. Once you prove it works the money and scale will quickly follow as waste goes from a loss leader to profit center.
It's about technical efficiency. I mean, it should be about technical efficiency. But it's, unfortunately not, because we live in an unsustainable profit-driven capitalist world that has no idea how to balance with nature or human health. It's an anti-human, anti-environmental and anti-social system. That's the Hard Reset we need. No, not the "Great Reset" where the rich get to be rich still. No, no, no. The reset where NOBODY is rich in monetary-wealth and controlling means of production privately for selfish gains. Where everybody has their basic needs met, by technical design of the system, contributing what they can, and getting back a high quality of living for all. No more war and politics. That's the society we can create.
Money?
Do you really think it would cost more than having several people trying to sort it out themselves? Not to mention the risk of infection or cuts to employees?
*our trash problem needs a major solution on a massive scale.*
businesses really need to get onboard with cutting the way they pollute and disallowing one-time use packaging
they won´t if it hurts their profits
Hard Reset is needed on a trash socio-economic system of market capitalism. The root cause of the majority of our problems is capitalism. There are many viable alternatives to capitalism we can transition towards that would not create so much waste in the first place and use resource much more efficiently, while meeting the needs of all people to a decent, human rights standard.
Technically efficiency > Market efficiency, all of the time. That's what we could do, if we want to live free, healthy and sustainable.
@@coolioso808 we need to abolish capitalism with all it´s inefficiencies if we want to survive as a species.
its not about businesses, its about regulation.
If you make single use plastic bags illegal (for example), businesses and people will adapt.
Do you use Apple products?
If so, then *you* are the problem
I've been waiting for this for a while to show up.. Every retail and manufacturing company including Amazon should help fund these Ai powered recycling facility.
A very good use of Machine learning to actually solve the world problems rather than just being used for creating images for magazine cover pages.Good Work AMP keep up your hardwork and best wishes in your journey in helping out all earthlings out of this mess.
That's ten years for the technology to be mature, but another 20-30 to scale it all over the world.
Lots of countries with lots of landfills out there.
@@udishomer5852 I agree with you I am just happy that ML is being used for something useful
Tbh creating images using AI is actually very important as well. Those who work in these types of fields need public data to understand how well their AI is able to interpret many different inputs and output similar results. Public use of image AI can help in many fields that require fast image processing and interpolation such as the trash machine you saw in this video.
Could this technology be used to break down existing landfills? That might be quite the reuse scenario.
good question. could be very valuable for the metal recovered
Run landfills through this system, recycle as much material as possible, and then run the remainder through a waste to energy plant with carbon capture. Net negative carbon effect if you count the methane that would have leaked from the landfill.
I’m nearly crying, after I was told AI could never accomplish feats like this years back. Imagine my surprise that these guys made it. YOU GO GUYS!!!!
I saw the same machine 5 years ago on youtube. it was very clear back than, that this will work in commercial scale in the near future.
It's a relative easy task for a robot/AI, and if we can use 3 bins (compostable, trash, recycleable) instead of the 9 we use today in Switzerland (compostable, trash, paper, cardboard, PET and PEHD, metal, glas, coffee-capsule, special like batteries, etc.) we can win/save a lot of very expensive space in the kitchen.
Yea you gonna be crying when that thing takes your job
@@JuanCarlos-zi5hy yeah I bet a machine that took years of development for a specific job will take other jobs you are probably referring to factory jobs which people bitch about 24/7 anyway
@@tomo1168 Nine...???? Oh my goodness!
How old are you?
I *LOVE* the humor Freethink has been increasingly adding to their programs. Nice job Freethink!!
I remember seeing a video of people in India picking through trash and living in filthy conditions. Set some of these up there, the staff is already there. Teach them to run the machines and pay them a percentage of how much landfill material is processed. They'll run them 24 7 and invest in new machines to expand the operations, creating new jobs and better conditions.
As a former chemist, I would like to know how they tell all the plastic types apart with just a camera. It can be done with special equipment (different wavelengths of light), but as far as I know, it isn't that fast (one item at a time). Would love to be wrong.
How are different plastics detected anyways? I think an Ai would be capable to distinguish plastic from other non plastic waste.
@@notlessgrossman163 Well, depending on the chemical structure the molecule absorbs difference wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. Absorption in the visible part gives you colors seen by humans, but chemicals also absorb in the UV (that's how sunscreen works) and IR range as well as other parts of the Electromagnetic spectrum.
This is not so much a "detect plastic type y" problem as it is a "detect mass-produced product X" problem, which is perfectly feasible with just a camera. And then once you've sorted the plastic by product you just match it with the known plastic type "offline", as it were.
@@LucGendrot exactly, in the video he was saying that. they know the chemistry from a "danone joghurt bottle" for example and they can sort it exactly to get the same chemistry back. There are machines using special wavelength lights and cameras, but this one ist that. I guess they can sort out the majority of the known products and the rest they could send to a special sorting machine with special equipement. But I think it wouldn't worth the cost.
Heyo, AMP employee here. Actually a super hard question to answer. The AI is fed an incredible number of examples and figures out for itself how to distinguish the different classes. It is actually really difficult to work backwards and say "what properties is the AI using." However, we do know that the AI is sensitive to a lot of the optical properties of the various materials: opacity, reflectiveness, texture, as well as color. It combines that with contextual information like recognizing the shape of the object or specific branding information to make its final determination.
Don't forget to give your really icky plastics/recyclables a good rinse before sending them to the blue bin as well, it really does help quite a bit, one dirty bottle can ruin a whole bale of plastics depending on what is it
And how much precious water should we devote to rinsing trash?
Just use less plastic bags/bottles/containers.
Not that hard, reduced my plastic bags usage by 95% in the past few years.
Plastic bottles by 99% (only very rarely I buy a water bottle outside).
in germany we have something called "mülltrennung". we have at least 4 different trash bins for different kind of trash. take notes america.
But still plastic gloves go into the "Gelbe Sack" instead of "Restmüll". But if the bag still gets incenerated it is "sowas von egal" aka "I don't care" mentality. Of course not by me. Also I makes me cgringe when someone says paper to an actual plastic wrapper of a candy.
yeah, same in Spain, and in most of Europe. Now, do some research, and you will see that most plastic we recycle it's actually sent to third world countries, since its cheaper to send it there than to recycle it ourselves. Those countries assure us that they will recycle it, so its not our problem anymore, and you know what, they just burn it. So we can have many "nice things and attitudes" in Europe, but its just facade.
@@GreyOne What facade? Most people know that most of the plastic waste is actually not recycled and that separate waste collection don't equals recycling.
@@veduci22 yeah. But the german guys was saying "take notes america" like we got some higher moral standards here because we got 4 different colored trash bins lol
Love it how some of your videos are full of humor that doesn't distract from the topic, but keeps my attention on the video. Great job, please keep it up! :D
I don't for one minute believe this. I've been in the waste business for almost 30 years. Of the 7 different types of plastic, only 2 can be recycled for a limited number of times. The latest recycling phrase is now "if in doubt, throw it out". This was done because of so many people putting things like plastic bags, electric cords and clothes hangers in their recycling bins. These items jam up the machinery and cause major damage. When the machines are out of operation, guess where the waste goes. If you said the landfills, you are correct.
If the inbound material is hit with hot or cold air for a defined time, few seconds before it gets into the sorter.. instead of only using the visual method for sorting, the data can also include the heat of the material (using a infrared cam). As distinct material will have different heat dissipation time.. it could also increase accuracy a lot!
If You use bright light , you may spot easier the metals. Also if sometimes something is not dectected by it's shape, can be simply pull in another direction and repeat the track.
I always thought "Man wouldn't it be cool if trash recognition was a thing in the future" - so cool to see that innovation happen in realtime with AI!
It's kinda best to see it in context of the whole video - but at :06:20 I had the biggest laugh I've had in years!
Amazing! The beginning of waste reduction. Very inspiring ❤
The hilarious way this guy speaks haha ..Name joke cracked me up loud 🤣
There will come time when we are regularly mining landfill sites (there is already limited mining).
Exactly what I have been thinking a while. One can imagine giant robotic worms burrowing in the stratas producing compacted labeled cubes for pickup to factories
Damn Michael reeves I’m proud of you turning that tomato salad picker to an awesome recycle factory👑
The editing, diverse content, and rich dialog in these videos are un-matched. Also all heading light on things that are great for business and our planet.
Reducing and reusing are both better options. Better recycling is certainly a good thing, don’t get me wrong. But what ever happened to glass, refillable bottles with a deposit? Expand it to other things than pop. Peanut butter, shampoo, mayonnaise, many items can come in refillable containers. Things like super concentrated laundry strips reduce packaging.
I love it. Once you catch up to the new stuff - ya never know it could happen - you can go digging into the old stuff (landfills). Stuff like this gives me some hope.Thanks.
Maybe they have already thought of this but what if we require every manufacturer to implant RFID chips inside every product/packaging so that we don't have to use complex AI vision system to sort garbage. Kind of like a barcode scanner that categorizes every object's material?
THAT is a GREAT idea!
Japanese people wash their recyclables before tossing them into the bin, but I doubt the others competent to do this, it's a cultural thing I guess
The animations are absolutely incredible!
Who ever the writer/editor is for this show needs a raise.. this is hilarious
Faxs
I like the robotic part of sorting things.. In Sweden we have done this for decades. Importen topic to solve globally! Nice video :)
That is really cool. Good luck with expanding this project!
Super important, thanks!
God bless this country's engineers. Keep going!
REMINDER:plastic can't be truly recycled. Reduce and reuse is the name of the game
Yes it gets downcycled each time and becomes ineffective after some repeatations.
Fantastic idea! The only thing missing is a fleet of huge space ships for people to live in while the robots solve the problem.
All this garbage sorting problem could easily be solved right at the root by teaching society to sort the garbage properly at home.
Also all these plastic packaging containers could also be changed to be more simple by using only 1 colour and specific sizes for easy stacking and disposal so there aren't 200 types of sizes.
This is absolutely amazing. And Freethink, I love your videos! New subscriber today! :)
These are just the 'easy' recyclables. The vast majority of non-land fill trash are simply loaded onto freight and shipped to third world countries. There need to be a strong push to educate people how to recycle from primary school all the way to adulthood. Most people are happy to recycle but few really knows how most items should be sorted. Legislation also needs to be introduced to homogenize packaging material and reduce low quality, single use packaging from entering into trash stream in the first place. THEN you try to build robots to sort through the trash. Anything less and you might as well give up.
Places like India and Africa and poor parts of the middle east and Pacific islands and poor parts of China and EU and Latin America NEED this.
Another step further helping the environment, good job guys
Sorting is one of humanities greatest challenges. If you sort you can catalogue. If you can catalogue you can standardize. If you can standardize you can first principle a lot more efficiently
We have to stop demonaizing plastic. Among all other packaging options, Plastic is the most versatile and easily recyclable. We just need to ensure that we recycle 100% of plastic we use.
"Density" should be the first parameter that is considered in sorting.
Towards the end there, why not highlight REUSE of bottles, without shattering and remelting them. Standardize bottle designs and integrate with drink producers.
One of the best use cases of ML!
Great to see progress on the sorting issue, but do the bales of plastic really get reused?
This is great, truly is!!! Also, a prime example of robotics technology development. When humans find a job too dull, repetitive, low-paying, etc., robots can step in. At that point, the robots or machines do a better job, never complain, and make big money out of the job. That’s exactly what these robots are doing! Yes, they’re costly, but wow do they do a fabulous job and make unexpected profit. Keep on truckin’!
This is great! However, to make a significant impact we need solutions on a policy level!
While this machine can separate a PET bottle from a cartboard box, it cannot distinct between an HPDE foil and a LDPE foil.
Let alone distinct a specific plactic with UV protective additives from one with heat resistance additives.
We need standards for the materials that can be used in Single-use packaging and products and we need to reduce the allowed plastics to a hand full that can be efficiently recycled.
As I understand it the AI does not distinguish between HPDE and LDPE foil per se. Rather it differentiates between CapriSun 6 oz. Fruit Punch Juice Box and Swanson Microwaveable Chicken Nuggets containers. The computer needs only to match the logos on the box to know what it's made of.
Impressive- although we’ll never solve these types of problems by working on the symptom.
This is how we clean our environment. We have to find methods to separate the trash and break it down to basic recyclable components. I loves this kind of innovation and I wish our polotitions would fund more of there type of initiatives...
Please consider making ones that can service music festivals, that would be amazing marketing plus the waste streams are pretty confined to specific items.
I like how the narrator breaks the fourth wall.
This is incredible 🙌🏻
When something gets recycled it's only for one more use. Infinite-loop recycling has been invented but at this stage isn't cost-effective. Incineration plants are the best thing right now (the video doesn't even mention them), but land-filling is what's being done instead. Smoke filtration systems can filter the smoke into harmless vapor.
This is the most amazingly hopeful thing I’ve seen this year. These folks should have a blank check from any grant producing group in the USA.
If you make a product that comes in a container it should be mandatory that you get the bottle approved and scanned by this Ai technology so it will be able to read it when it goes in the trash.
Fine, but really not much necessary. You can make the items that are not sorted by the IA, being scanned by the IA, and then the IA start learning for his mistakes. Unregistred brands could then registred automatically
Great work thank yoU
This stuff isn't as sexy as electric cars or building rockets, but these kinds of companies and ultimately people are making a truly positive difference for our world.
Another one that isn't sexy but is ridiculously important is refrigerants. Refrigerants are set to explode in usage across the world
In the developing countries, most are putting in AC. In colder countries, people are putting in heat pumps. That stuff is way more potent than carbon
Those paper piles can be worth upwards of five hundred dollars at least just from information like Sharon’s if you sell it to the right people
Your announcer is brilliant! And/or text author. Great work!
it's amazing, never don't stop!
Great. Scale it up!
Would love to hear more about the technical specs. 80 items per minute, is that enough to handle a city's worth of trash? I know OECD countries are being measured by how much trash the separate, but not by how much of that is actually recycled. Lots of work to be done here, but in the end I wonder if it all just allows us to consume more instead of focusing on reuse.
Maybe the IA robot is fine for some things and is a bit slow for others. Imagine having a bunch of cellphones and the IA sorting by Brand for make easier extract the rare metals disarming precissely. In that case, a slow arm is just fine.
Now, for sort metals, simply use a magnet, a lot of metals get of simply by that way.
Great. Love it.
Best answer is that I burn it all and pick the metal out of the ash.
Power from trash! It’s a renewable resource.
In California they have a bio waste power plant that uses scraps of wood from the almond orchard.
Both can be built to burn clean
Every household, every business needs one of these. It starts at the consumer.
No it doesn't, the consumers should be the ones that's worry the less about anything.
Pretty cool machine! That's a very similar application of AI to the AI Sniper Agriculture Farmrobot you showed here as well. 👍
We had an air pusher machine that sorted stuff like this 5 years ago, issue is the plastic was too contaminated with food to recycle, so unless they solved the issue with that idk how this helps.
Why aren’t they using some sort of air jet expulsion system like the food industry uses for quality control? These robots seem like they’d wear down quickly and probably cost an insane amount
Two things come to mind for this to grow rapidly:
1. Easy blueprints for constructing the recycling lines. The simpler, the easier it is to make and assemble.
2. "outsource" the data collecting of trash, so the AI becomes more accurate. 99% is next to god-tier, but if 99,9% was achievable, it would help out regardless :) hell, even 100%
These guys is doing the world a favor with this kind of work, but we need more people on it.
When Dr. Matanya Horowitz said it could be done in 10 years, i got really happy and excited.
The remarkable information you provide to your viewers needs to be applauded. I sincerely appreciate your effort to expand your viewers knowledge. A sincere thank you!
2:25 Spectrumeter tingling
crazy how one day you'll be able to get a loan from a bank to take an old landfill and "mine" it for its valuable materials
*edit I watched more video, so I still think a density sort would be helpful, then use Ai to then sort by brand etc. That's a point I never thought being specific composition of the objects and subsequent brands for more effective recycling. Like various types of plastic etc.
Would floatation/ density sorting be more efficient, less complex? Like use that concept, then shred those sorted piles to refine into another density sort.
Well, it doesn’t work on 90% of plastic trash, because even if you separate it, most of it are multilayered and unknown plastics which cant be recycled in a costeffective way.
Been saying this for years, the tech will soon get to the point where we are digging up and processing landfills for the resouces.
Aww, I was really hoping he'd stick a piece of paper *in* the bottle!
Here's and idea. All plastic bottles have to be the same shape, all glass bottles have to be the same shape, all paper products must be the same shape, etc. If we do this wouldn't sorting be even easier?
They need to team up with the 'PV panel recycle is too expensive' team. Another vid mentioned it was currently $30 to recycle for recovery of $5 or so of materials.
Recycle droids programmed with specific panel designs could probably drop that dramatically, allowing nearly full solar panel recycling.
amazing stuff
I believe without some hard regulations worldwide concerning materials and packaging we will go nowhere with recycling, it just will not cut it. Besides the industry just pretends trying limiting waste while in reality its the oposite - controlled product aging - you cannot disassmble by yourself most of the stuff you buy without damaging it and this is on purpose, instead of simply repairing it you just have to throw it away. I repair my broken led bulbs - you replace one broken led diod and all works just fine (never put back the led plastic cover - it shortens the lifespan of a bulb dramatically by heat)
Bravo!
Do you separate the plastic and then recycle it?
they really should be using hyperspectral sensors so they can index based on material. the machine learning training is the same but the data is much better.
But U forgot to mention that some materials can not be recyclyed forever. So recycling is important but reducing waste is even more important.
Note how they never mention tackling Packaging companies that insist on using these materials that cannot be recycled? Policies and laws made at the federal level on what materials packaging companies can produce and how they combine them would mean you wouldn't need a robot sorter. but sure.. keep building around the problem companies
Make plastic, glass bottles and other packaging very expensive and see how quickly they will disappear from streets and landfills.
EXCELLENT
Sorting the trash is not the solution. Look at how much trash the US is producing, no other country generates more waste per capita than the US.
Tho other "developed" countrys aren't that much better.
We all need to reduce the amount of trash and not hope for it to get better sorted. There is no proper recycling, just downcycling.
Plastic eating enzymes are a thing. Metal and glass tbf can be infinitely recycled
You're right that we still need to reduce usage however. Nobody needs a new phone every couple of years
Where i live theyve been seperating plastics with laserscanners, they can scan the types of plastics and sort them by using airblowers.
Using Ai seems more logical for multi material products, otherwise it seems a bit like a waste of energy.
This seems like an overly complex solution to a less complex problem.
Funny thing is, is that 90% if that material is recovered in countries outside the us.
If they were upset at the amount of waste in Bulk at the Material Recycling Plant they visit any one of the Amazon Facilities that hold returned products.
The problem isn't People throwing away 5lbs of garbage away each day it's the ridiculousness the amount of plastic, wires, rubber and paper products that is involved in just the container that holds the item being bought. After spending 15min to remove a Toy from the package it's in your left with Bulk Waste
I bet they go through a lot of sensitive information too.
The petrochemical companies would not like actual recycling, which is why most plastic doesn't get recycled at all.
Nice idea. Definitely AI and robotics can separate waste faster and more accurate than humans. However, very little waste can actually be recycled. A Swedish company Mälarenergi incinerates waste and produce electricity and heat homes from the heat produced by burning waste. The chimney is filtered so the air is not getting polluted. Waste incineration is the ultimate waste management. Also highly profitable because you produce and sell electricity and heating.
By burning one bale of PET-bottles you wont get 1000 USD revenue. Incineration is the most profitable and easiest waste-management system today. But not tomorrow. 1st choise should be: reuse, 2nd: recycle, only 3rd, way behind: burn it.
Sweden over-built itself with waste-incineration-plants and now has a problem of under-usage, it has to import trash from neighbouring countries to use the capacity.
@@tomo1168 I suggest that you shoud watch a documentary about recycling scams. Experts explain that recycling plastics is not what most people think. Majority of collected plastics ends up in third world countries and in the ocean. Sweden imports waste because it's profitable. The incinerator plants are getting paid for destroying the waste. So making money just by receiving the waste. And making money from electricity production and heating residential houses.
@@1323lobo I saw more documentaries about recycling scam. I do know how it works and that the half of that will be burned. But you should understand: that balo of sorted one kind of plastic is really worth 1000 USD. And you should understand, this machine is sorting the plastics, not how it is done f.i. in Germany where they sort out only the PET and the rest will be just burned.
@@tomo1168 " that balo of sorted one kind of plastic is really worth 1000 USD" Lol wtf? Source? Because I work in industry and, guaranteed, that is not true. And recycled plastics are inherently contaminated, and less durable and useable in general vs virgin plastic. Recycled plastics cost around .80-1 dollar a kilo, and guaranteed that "balo" doesn't weigh even close to a metric ton. So I would call that statement....wait for it.... garbage.
He said that in the vid. And with the high oil prices today it is possible.
This is cool application of AI.
great video again
Most Plastic products should be remade to be compostible.
I called all over Ohio to recycle 2.5 tons of glass aquariums. Absolutely no recycling plant would receive them in any manner. I called Columbus, Cleveland and a private recycling company. The private company would only accept truck load quantities and the county recycling would only accept post consumer glass like bottles. Ended up in the landfill even though it was 99.5% glass. In the end, it’s simply always going to be cheaper to produce new product from virgin material. AI won’t fix that.
A lot a problem with recycling is these companies that turn these plastics back into pellets to be turned back into bottles or pvc pipes often will not accept them because it's cheaper and easier to make products out of virgin material then it is recycled.
Are there any open source "trash" datasets?