A robot for sorting plastics to be recycled

The Japanese Idec and the Photonics Advanced Research Center (PARC) of the Osaka University have jointly developed a robot with laser sensor which can sort different types of plastics to be recycled thanks to a photonics sensing technology, which has been installed on an automated system from Mitsubishi Electric Engineering (MEE). The robot "eye" is sensitive to 5 wavelengths and recognizes different plastics according to their reflecting property. This robot is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and could be used progressively for sorting an increasingly wide range of plastics.