AI-powered self-learning robots for high-performance waste valorization and Critical Raw Materials recovery
iBot4CRMs is devoted to develop and pilot a self-learning robot integrating novel AI tools, data models and meticulous manipulations to enable recovery of critical raw materials (CRMs) from urban waste and dismantling end of life products. Wastes are manually sorted today by trained staff to remove hazardous materials before incineration and recover CRMs and magnets from crashed cars, electric motors, electronic waste and home appliances after manual dismantling. Current sorting machines face limitations in separating tons/hour of waste flow in only three streams maximum as they are not able to deal with large variability in waste such that effectivity still depends on heavy manual sorting. iBot4CRMs aims to build sorting robots that encompass handcrafting and intelligence to support human work in managing the unmanageable of recovering CRMs from urban waste in real-time. The robot system will integrate solutions that are re-usable from other sectors to converge senso-mechanical perception with evolutionary learning and flexible manipulation in a responsible research and innovation for effective dismantling and precise picking of CRMs from waste to improve circularity and impact on securing critical value chains for Europe. iBot4CRMs addresses four large scale pilots for recovery of CRMs in reals-settings at large end-users and industries in Spain, Portugal, Greece and Turkey, each of them comprising several technological validation scenarios, and facilitates collaboration between small and large companies towards enabling the scalability and wider exploitation of results. The project targets CRMs of high impact/volume in waste such as recovery and recycling of neodymium magnets by dismantling motors as well as recovering selected CRMs and removing hazardous materials by effective robot picking. iBot4CRMs has not only high scientific impact with such a technology that does exist today but will also open for opportunities to meet circularity and resilience in Europe.