[HN Gopher] AI-guided robots are ready to sort recyclables ___________________________________________________________________ AI-guided robots are ready to sort recyclables Author : giuliomagnifico Score : 30 points Date : 2022-06-25 18:48 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org) (TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org) | geuis wrote: | I wish articles like this would just get to the point. We don't | need yet another explanation of how recycling works, how it has | low recovery rates, etc. Given the audience, take it as a given | the reader has the basics down. | | Further down the author finally starts to talk about their topic | (trash picking robots), but then digresses yet again. It's a | really terrible writing style. | | State what your topic is up front with a brief high level, then | you can mix in some more background while expanding on the | details further below. | swayvil wrote: | If you want to be taken seriously you need to pad everything | out to 40 paragraphs. It's some kind of unwritten rule of the | internet. Literally. They even have bots that cull succinctity | or label it trolly. It's psychotic. | darepublic wrote: | I worked at a mid sized startup where this idea was floated for | developing a prototype. Neat to see it has become production | level software somewhere | sschueller wrote: | What I find sad is to see startups here in Switzerland where we | already separate and recycle extensively that offer a service | where you just toss everything that can be recycled in the same | bag. So batteries are mixed with plastic and cans. These bags | compete with government collection facilities and are | "reprogramming" people to be lazy. Regular trash is very | expensive here and people who want to safe are forced to separate | and recycle what can be. | | The hardest task of recycling is the separation of items. | Centralizing this does not scale as you need to hire more and | more underpaid worked to do this task. The task that was done for | free before by the person throwing the item out. All the | facilities had to do is sort the remaining small percentage of | miss sorted items instead of all items. | malux85 wrote: | Nobody is suggesting hiring more low skilled people the article | is about robotics doing the job. | | Robotic sorting is better because it's more consistent, most | people are not diligent or disciplined enough to recycle at | all, and of those that do, only a minority does it properly. | | We should absolutely scale this to machines, since it's a | useful thing for society, and it gives us (humanity) practice | at implementing robotic dexterity, which is a precursor to 100 | more even more exciting tasks | quotemstr wrote: | Does sorting done by the general public count as "free"? It | takes time and effort to route garbage to the appropriate bin | --- maybe not much, but it adds up over the whole population. | The desire to avoid this effort doesn't strike me as "lazy" any | more than hiring a housekeeper or landscaper is "lazy". | Economies of scale and division of labor make our society more | prosperous. Why shouldn't we apply these principles to trash | disposal and recycling? | morcheeba wrote: | A friend of mine worked at this company, and the bane of his | existence was one popular Arizona green tea bottle. The plastic | and glass versions looked identical[1], so no way to sort it | visually. Great for brand identity, bad downstream. | | [1] https://www.plasticstoday.com/packaging/arizona-beverages- | sw... | epicureanideal wrote: | I suppose a law could be passed that versions of a product with | different materials would need to be visually distinct? Or | manufacturers could voluntarily do it. | darkerside wrote: | I wonder if echolocation could have done the trick | swayvil wrote: | Seriously. Give that robot some more senses. Echoic, | magnetic, infra-ultra, spectrographic analytic, nuclear | magnetic resonant... the whole schmeer. It's certainly easier | than making them smarter. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-25 23:00 UTC)