Automation of waste recycling using hyperspectral image analysis

Abstract

The advent of new hyperspectral imaging modalities made possible the implementation of flexible machine vision systems that can be designed to solve a variety of industrial tasks such as automatic material sorting. However the design of robust machine vision systems is far from a trivial task as several issues including mechanical design, development of an appropriate illumination set-up, optimal interfacing between the sensing and optical equipment with the computer vision component have to be properly addressed in order to accommodate all challenges that are encountered in a typical industrial environment. In this paper we present a novel methodology to automate the recycling process of non-ferrous metal Waste from Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) where a particular emphasis is placed on the design choices that were made in the development of the proposed waste sorting system. The developed machine vision system has been subjected to a thorough robustness evaluation and the reported experimental results indicate that the proposed solution can be used to replace the manual procedure that is currently used in WEEE recycling plants.