Bringing Recycling into the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Just because something is recyclable does not automatically mean it is recycled. However, AMP Robotics wants to change that. Their application of artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to identify and recover recyclables with rates of speed and precision previously unknown to the industry. GLOBAL RECYCLING Magazine wanted to learn more about the American company that helps businesses, governments, and NGOs achieve higher recycling rates and supply greater volumes of post-consumer recycled content.

AMP has announced its European expansion. What services do you offer in Europe?
AMP provides a portfolio of recycling solutions powered by our industry-leading neural network, which is built on a data engine that has recognized more than 50 billion containers and packaging types in real-world conditions. AMP Cortex is our high-speed robotic sorting system with approximately 230 deployments in more than 80 facilities across three continents. Our install base is the largest known fleet of recycling robots in the world, creating the most expansive neural network of field data for recycled materials. AMP Vision is a modular computer vision system that helps operators understand material flow throughout key stages of sorting operations and serves as a quick and efficient alternative to manual sampling audits. When integrated with AMP Clarity, our material characterization and robot performance software solution, users can monitor real-time material characterization and performance measurement throughout a facility. And we recently introduced new Clarity features including mass estimation; robot pick assignments, alerts, and status tracking; and expanded reporting capabilities.

We have grown our European team to include Direct Sales, Marketing, Post sales, Service and Maintenance. Our initial focus was on serving Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and Switzerland, along with the UK and Ireland, but the interest in our AI material recognition systems as well as AI-powered robotic pickers grew so significantly that we are now covering all European countries. AMP Robotics‘ main goal remains the continuous support and close collaboration with its customers. While we expanded our territories, our commitment to work hand in hand with our customers to improve their material recovery rate is our priority.

Are new projects scheduled at the present time in Europe? Can you tell us more?
We‘re engaged with a number of major players in the recycling industry across Europe both for AI recognition vision systems and our robotic picking system. We‘ve had some successful deployments in Europe, including FCC in Spain and Recyco in Northern Ireland, and we‘re very excited about the upcoming projects our team will take on in the coming months. Due to confidentiality clauses, we, unfortunately, can‘t share more details at this moment.

When will the planned installations go into operation?
Mostly in Q4 2022.

Which projects and solutions in the waste and recycling field are you currently developing for the European market?
We are continuously expanding the number of labels recognized by our AI neural network. Our AI platform, AMP Neuron, continues to achieve breakthroughs in data accuracy and classification of different polymers, form factors, and other packaging types, which is helping our customers take a more data-driven approach to increasing recovery, lowering costs, and optimizing operations.

We are also continuing to innovate our AI capabilities to identify and recover film and flexible packaging, which create operational challenges for MRFs and historically have been complicated to recover and expensive to reprocess into raw materials.

What are your longer-term plans for the future?
As we continue to scale our business and innovate new ways to improve the economics of recycling, we are committed to the European market and our growing customer base there. Our efforts to modernize Europe’s recycling infrastructure are important to our global investors and critical to realizing our vision of a world without waste. Our goal is to establish AMP as the global market leader for AI, robotics, and material characterization systems. In the mid-term, we are evaluating the introduction of our own production facility in Europe while we continue to expand our local team.

www.amprobotics.com

(Published in GLOBAL RECYCLING Magazine 3/2022, Page 40, Photo: AMP Robotics)