Automation of waste recycling using hyperspectral image analysis

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.