The technological advances that have been achieved over the past decades have led to a tremendous increase of both the types and the total amount of electrical and electronic equipment that is manufactured. Despite the importance of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) management, the issue of the WEEE recycling has not received that increased industrial attention.
HR-Recycler will target the development of a 'hybrid human-robot recycling plant for electrical and electronic equipment' operating in an indoor environment. The fundamental aim of the system (and its great innovation potential) will be to replace multiple currently manual, expensive, hazardous and time-consuming tasks of WEEE materials pre-processing with correspondingly automatic robotic-based procedures (categorization of electric/electronic devices, disassembling them, sorting of device components), before the materials are eventually provided as input to a fine shredding machine and conventional material separation steps are applied (using air/water flows, oscillating movements, magnets, etc.).
More specifically, the overall goal of HR-Recycler is to create a hybrid collaboration environment, where humans and robots will harmoniously share and undertake at the same time different processing and manipulation tasks, targeting the industrial application case of WEEE recycling.
The primary output of the envisaged system will be to extract sorted electric/electronic device components [e.g. Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs), Cu coils, capacitors, etc.] and concentrated fractions (e.g. copper, aluminium, plastics, etc.) of increased economic and environmental value; hence, contributing to the fundamental goal of the 'European circular economy' project and boosting economic activity in secondary markets. Additionally, mixed fractions (i.e. fractions with low concentration in valuable materials) will be collected, in order to be sent to other facilities for further dedicated recycling process.
| Web resources: |
https://www.hr-recycler.eu/
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/820742 |
| Start date: | 01-12-2018 |
| End date: | 30-11-2022 |
| Total budget - Public funding: | 6 986 573,00 Euro - 6 986 573,00 Euro |
| Twitter: | @HrRecycler |
Original description
The technological advances that have been achieved over the past decades have led to a tremendous increase of both the types and the total amount of electrical and electronic equipment that is manufactured. Despite the importance of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) management, the issue of the WEEE recycling has not received that increased industrial attention. HR-Recycler will target the development of a ‘hybrid human-robot recycling plant for electrical and electronic equipment’ operating in an indoor environment. The fundamental aim of the system (and its great innovation potential) will be to replace multiple currently manual, expensive, hazardous and time-consuming tasks of WEEE materials pre-processing with correspondingly automatic robotic-based procedures (categorization of electric/electronic devices, disassembling them, sorting of device components), before the materials are eventually provided as input to a fine shredding machine and conventional material separation steps are applied (using air/water flows, oscillating movements, magnets, etc.). More specifically, the overall goal of HR-Recycler is to create a hybrid collaboration environment, where humans and robots will harmoniously share and undertake at the same time different processing and manipulation tasks, targeting the industrial application case of WEEE recycling. The primary output of the envisaged system will be to extract sorted electric/electronic device components [e.g. Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs), Cu coils, capacitors, etc.] and concentrated fractions (e.g. copper, aluminium, plastics, etc.) of increased economic and environmental value; hence, contributing to the fundamental goal of the ‘European circular economy’ project and boosting economic activity in secondary markets. Additionally, mixed fractions (i.e. fractions with low concentration in valuable materials) will be collected, in order to be sent to other facilities for further dedicated recycling process.Status
SIGNEDCall topic
DT-FOF-02-2018Update Date
27-10-2022
24/06/20 - 10:13
CERTH explain their work in AI-enabled Cell-level perception methods
The objective of this task is to provide the envisaged robot with the ability to perceive the industrial environment so as to effectively collaborate with the humans and assist them with the Waste Electrical and Electronic (WEEE) device recycling process. Towards this direction, CERTH recorded multiple recycling procedures of four WEEE devices, namely PC Towers, Microwave Ovens, Flat Panel Displays and Emergency Lamps, focusing on the human-robot collaboration aspect during the WEEE device disassembly, thus creating a WEEE device component detection dataset by manually annotating a number of the recorded frames.
Given this dataset, CERTH deployed state of the art Computer Vision methods utilizing Deep Learning techniques in order to train a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) capable of detecting the four WEEE devices as well as their respective components during the various stages of the disassembly process. Additionally, CERTH enhanced these methods by proposing an anchoring mechanism targeting specifically the detection of small objects.
https://www.hr-recycler.eu/certh-explains-their-work-in-ai-enabled-cell-level-perception-methods/
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| ETHNIKO KENTRO EREVNAS KAI TECHNOLOGIKIS ANAPTYXIS (CERTH) (Coördinator)
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| BIANATT ANAKYKLOSI AIIE ANONIMI BIOMICHANIKI EMPORIKI ETAIRIA (BNTT)
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| COMAU SPA
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| CS GROUP-FRANCE
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| DIGINEXT (DXT)
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| ECORESET SA
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| FUNDACIO INSTITUT DE BIOENGINYERIA DE CATALUNYA (IBEC)
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| FUNDACION GAIKER
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| FUNDACION TECNALIA RESEARCH & INNOVATION
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| INDUMETAL RECYCLING, S.A. (IND)
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| INTERECYCLING - SOCIEDADE DE RECICLAGEM SA (INT)
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| ROBOTNIK AUTOMATION SLL
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| SADAKO TECHNOLOGIES SL (SDK)
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| STICHTING KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT (SKU/RU)
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| TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET MUENCHEN