FANUC UK has revealed how it helped a growing recycling tech company ‘revolutionise’ the waste management sector with its AI-powered approach to sorting materials.
London-based Recycleye uses proprietary AI vision technology in conjunction with FANUC 6-axis LR Mate robots to automate the detection and sorting of dry mixed recyclables, which has traditionally been a largely manual process.
This system, called Recycleye Robotics, is said to have resulted in an increase in sorting accuracy of up to 12% and improved line output of up to 10%.
Founded in 2020 with just four members of staff, Recycleye now employs over 45 people and has an install base that reaches across the UK and Europe.
CEO Victor Dewulf said, “FANUC has been a key enabler in the success we’ve achieved so far, and they’re central to our future ambitions. They really put their faith in us and the product we set out to deliver.”
Recycleye’s journey took another step forward recently when it announced a $17 million Series A financing round, led by deep-tech venture capital firm DCVC.
Recycleye Robotics uses AI-powered computer vision to identify every single item in waste streams. The FANUC LR Mate robot automatically separates those recyclables into different material classes such as plastics, aluminium, paper and cardboard. it can operate 24/7, picking up to 33,000 items per robot over a 10-hour shift.
Chief technical officer Peter Hedley commented, “The FANUC LR Mate 200 iD/4SC is the perfect accompaniment to our vision system. We were looking to bring new technology into a very established, traditional industry. Although mostly reliant on manual pickers, any robots already being used to sort dry, mixed recyclables tended to be large, heavy Delta robots. The ability to retrofit our lightweight system into customers’ existing lines at a reasonable price point was therefore crucial.”
This ‘retrofitability’ was described as a main draw of the LR Mate – as a compact, short arm, mini robot, it is easy to integrate into confined spaces.
For materials recycling facilities, the benefits of Recycleye’s technology also include a solution to the current labour shortage.
Peter explained, “The LR Mate robot can pick as accurately as a human worker, and the vision system is as accurate as a human eye. Robots don’t need to take a break, don’t slow down or get tired, and don’t leave the job or need replacing. This is crucial as it can be very hard to find manual workers for waste picking.
“Recycleye Robotics is more consistently accurate than a human worker and can work safely alongside human employees, thanks to its safety guarding. It can also easily handle the hazardous materials that are routinely found in sorting facilities, which can injure human pickers. It’s therefore an ideal complement to the existing workforce.”
A further benefit is that materials which are sorted to the highest purity will command a higher price. Recycleye Robotics is usually used at the quality assurance stage of the recycling process. The system’s traceability function means every item is scanned and the resulting data visualised on a dashboard.
FANUC UK has been part of the Recycleye journey from the start. With an install base of 14 systems across Europe in just three years and 25 FANUC LR Mates already purchased, FANUC UK’s head of sales, Oliver Selby, is confident this is just the beginning for Recycleye.
“We wanted to be at Recycleye’s side from day one,” he said. “We had very early engagement with them and put in place a plan that allowed them to de-risk their offering to the market. We conducted simulations and physical trials to make sure that when the product was finally released, it was going to work exactly as planned.
“The result is a solution that allows a higher throughput than anything else on the market today and offers a superb, automated alternative to traditional sorting methods using a compact robot, which is easy to deploy, easy to install and with low lifetime costs.”
