It’s no secret that safety in solid waste collection is a major
issue. Each company and municipality works to teach best safety
practices, yet accidents and injuries still occur. In fact, according to
recent Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, the waste and recycling
industry remained the fifth most dangerous occupation in America in
2014.
Injuries occur in all sectors of the waste and recycling
industry, but Volvo Group expects its Robot-based Autonomous Refuse
handling (ROAR) system to reduce the risk of injury for collection
drivers.
Instead of a team of human workers, Volvo’s robots
will receive instructions from operating systems to do the heavy lifting
and dumping. Drivers stay put, overseeing the controls.
The
manufacturer currently is working with Chalmers University of Technology
and Mälardalen University in Sweden, Penn State University, and the
Swedish waste and recycling company Renova, to develop a robot that
interacts with refuse trucks and drivers to accomplish the work in a
quieter fashion, relieving haulers of the physical stresses of the job.
Automated collection is not new to the waste industry. More and more
municipalities are automating collection to save on labor and cut down
on injury-related insurance costs. But Volvo and company are taking the
approach to the next level.
The purpose of ROAR is to
demonstrate how society, in the very near future, will use smart
machines to assist with a broad range of activities. This technology,
which is scheduled for live testing in June 2016, can be applied in many
areas. Refuse collection is just one example.
“Within Volvo
Group we foresee a future with more automation,” Per-Lage G?tvall,
project leader for the Volvo Group said in a statement. “This project
provides a way to stretch the imagination and test new concepts to shape
transport solutions for tomorrow.”
If the idea of a robot
riding shotgun along solid waste routes and zipping to the curb to pick
up and empty garbage-laden bins seems a bit too futuristic, consider the
Oxford University 2013 study, “The Future of Employment: How
Susceptible are Jobs to Computerization,” which predicts that 47 percent
of U.S. jobs could be automated within one to two decades.
The
study also points out that in the past decades, industrial robots have
taken on the routine tasks of most operatives in manufacturing. Now,
however, more advanced robots are gaining enhanced sensors and
manipulators, allowing them to perform non-routine manual tasks – maybe
even rolling out a full solid waste cart and dumping it in the truck.
After all, robots are doing more than just factory jobs. Most materials
recovery facilities (MRFs) already use of a mixture of advanced sorting
technologies supplemented by human hand sorting. Finnish engineering
firm ZenRobotics has installed its automated sorting technology from
Helsinki to Finland to New Jersey.
Currently designed for
construction and demolition waste, ZenRobotics Recycler reclaims
valuable raw materials from waste with the help of advanced machine
learning technology, sorting metal, wood and stone fractions.
ZenRobotics Recycler uses multiple sensors (visible spectrum cameras,
NIR, 3D laser scanners, haptic sensors, etc). to create a real-time
analysis of the waste stream being currently processed. Based on the
analysis, the system makes autonomous decisions on what objects to pick
and how.
But what if you could deploy a free-roaming robot in a
variety of environments (such as along garbage routes, at commercial
landfills or transfer stations) and have it identify and sort all manner
of recyclables using sensors akin to those at work on an advanced MRF
line?
General Electric, for example, has used robots to climb
and maintain wind turbines, and more flexible surgical robots with a
greater range of motion are performing more types of operations.
Vanguard Plastics Corp, a precision injection molding company in
Connecticut, uses Baxter robots, which much like the ROAR concept, work
in collaboration with human workers, to complete their tasks. These
robots have a $25,000 base price, according to the manufacturer website.
Technological advances are contributing to declining costs in robotics.
Over the past decades, robot prices have fallen about 10 percent
annually and are expected to decline at an even faster pace in the near
future, making them more accessible to industries like solid waste.
For the ROAR project, the three universities are part of Volvo Group’s
Academic Partner Program, a network of twelve academic partners
collaborating with Volvo for long-term cooperation in research and
recruitment. The students have different tasks and roles.
M?lardalens University is designing the robot itself, and Penn State′s
Thomas D. Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute is working on the
graphics, communication systems and control panel for the truck driver.
Students at Chalmers University are working on the overall operating
system. Renova is developing the vehicle.
“Chalmers has for
many years developed the technology for the control and coordination of
autonomous systems, and we see that we can deal with problems of the
complex type that waste handling entails” Petter Falkman, associate
professor of automation at Chalmers said in a press release. “This will
be a fun and challenging project for our driven researchers and
motivated students.”
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