[HN Gopher] AI-guided robots are ready to sort recyclables
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       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.
        
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       (page generated 2022-06-25 23:00 UTC)