Page 65 - Plastics News Issue October 2025
P. 65
TECHNOLOGY NEWS
Robotics in Recycling Plants: The Hands of Au- ideal results.
tomation
Within a single system, the waste could be sub-
With the development of the brain, the hands jected to an optical sorting waste in the plastic
develop as well. Recycling. This could be imple- recycling module, then to NIR sensors on the
mented in the recycling plants by introducing ro- plastics, after which the waste is subjected to
botics that have AI-powered vision systems to robotic arms to check on the final quality. The
sort waste at faster rates than ever. They do not outcome is a smooth process consisting of the
get tired, make subjective mistakes, and they minimum human input and the maximum of ma-
can work with dangerous waste without endan- terial recovery.
gering human personnel.
Recycling costing is being redefined by such
Combined with AI sorting waste and deep learn- systems. Increased throughput, reduced con-
ing to recognize polymers, robots become com- tamination, and increased quality output trans-
plete participants in the recycling facility. They late to more profitable operations. What is more
are capable of picking, sorting, and putting ma- important is that they prepare the groundwork
terials in the appropriate bins with unbelievable for the circular economy recycling of plastics so
accuracy. In addition, robots are also being en- that the materials are constantly recycled into
gineered to have soft grippers and deft motions the production process without loss of value.
so that they can manipulate delicate objects
without any damage. Deep Learning for Polymer Identification: A
Closer Look
This creates an interest in knowing what the
future of the recycling workforce will be. Will a We can break now and examine how deep learn-
new generation of human employees move into ing is used to identify polymers further. Deep
supervisory roles, where they oversee the fleets learning models replicate the human brain's pat-
of robots and data systems, instead of being di- tern recognition as opposed to other algorithms,
rectly involved in working with waste? At that, which are based on set rules because they are
the recycling plants can become hi-tech spaces rule-based algorithms. They do not simply cat-
where people and machines can work together egorize by color or texture but make up compli-
in the sphere of sustainable resources utilization. cated non-linear associations among data.
Automated Plastic Sorting Systems: The Or- As an example, we may have a mixed stream of
chestration of Innovation PET bottles and PVC bottles. They are almost
the same to the naked eye, but one is food safe
Individual technologies are great in their own and the other is not. These misidentifications can
merits, but the real strength is in integration. be disastrous in the case of recycling. In the case
The automated plastic sorting systems are set of deep learning, the system processes thou-
to manage the interaction between AI, sensors, sands of data items in real-time and identifies
optics, and robotics. The way to look at them is the minute variances that a human being can-
to think of them as the musicians of a symphony not perceive. The accuracies are higher than the
of recycling, with every instrument having a criti- conventional means, and thus, the recyclers are
cal part to play in the process of producing the sure to produce high purity of recycled plastics
October 2025 PLASTICS NEWS 65
