Osaka University of Japan and Mitsubishi Electric Engineering have collaborated to design an intelligent recycling robot that uses laser sensing technology to distinguish six different types of recyclable plastic waste from all other waste.

       The robot is 1.7 meters to 2.1 meters high, which has an arm for automaticaly sorting garbage. It is equipped with laser beams and sensors to analyze the laser reflectivity of five different wavelengths in the garbage to identify recyclable plastics for different purposes. Rubbish. Once determined as a plastic material, it is classified and compressed, which is equivalent to an automatic garbage sorter. The purpose of using this robot is to simplify the garbage sorting process and increase the amount of plastic waste that can be reused.

        It is said that garbage sorting is a difficult industry in Japan, and often impossible to tell what types of plastics are recyclable and what is not available, resulting in low recovery rates. The public has to manually classify plastic waste. Generally, each household divides their garbage into several categories, from "combustibles" to "recyclables"etc. At present, plastic recycling is very limited—only two types of waste plastics are recycled, and other plastics are burned with general waste. This type of robot uses classification strategy to identify six different types of recyclable plastics that are separated from common waste, improving plastic recovery and allowing people to recycle plastic waste more confidently.

　　The recycling waste prototype robot is in the testing phase and currently undergoing demonstration tests in stores of Osaka and Nara. Smaller versions of the robot are expected to be put into production, priced at approximately $55,000 each. Such robots are too expensive and are likely to be more suitable for commercial and industrial use, and not many people will buy one for home use.