The mixed recycling loads arrive relentlessly at Republic Services in north Denver, 500 tons a day, 10,000 tons a month, exhausting and confusing for any human brave enough to take on the nonstop sorting job at relatively low wages.
But the robots don’t get exhausted. And they rarely get confused. So Republic Services, like other mass trash and recycling sorters, is adding artificial intelligence-assisted robot arms to keep up with a rapid expansion of Colorado’s waste-diversion efforts.
The AI-assisted arms installed in May in north Denver are plucking valuable stray pieces of cardboard off the conveyor lines at 60 to 70 hits a minute. There are many things the robots don’t do better than humans, but at this they have been an instant success: A human worker on the same line is plucking 40 to 50 cardboard scraps a minute, with far more mistakes…