Promote Circular Economy by Improving Waste Resource Traceability and Management
Hardware: NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX
Use Case Provider: Lixo
Application: Waste Sorting and Collection
Industry: Waste Management
Deployment Location: Global
Lixo offers an advanced waste management solution powered by NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX. This innovative solution enhances identification accuracy through precise categorization and analyzes sorting performance based on time tracing and geographical reporting. Doing so, significantly improves operational efficiency, waste polarity, and contributes to the growth of the circular economy.
Background
The waste management sector is facing two major trends: a significant increase in waste volume and rising costs. The World Bank projects a 70% increase in waste by 2050. Additionally, the extraction and processing of raw materials contribute to nearly half of greenhouse gas emissions, highlighting the need for resource recycling and sustainable supply chains. To achieve efficient recycling, recycled materials must be more competitive than newly sourced ones, which necessitates that the waste management sector quickly enhances its efficiency. It’s essential for all of us to realize that the circular economy’s success depends on data usage for traceability and managing the digital carbon footprint.
Challenge
In the domain of waste management, the significant challenges to address are that, firstly, the objects themselves may be highly deformed, jagged, superimposed, and nested, further complicated by variations in color and shape. Besides, as new products and packages are constantly introduced to the market, this diversity continues to expand, resulting in the under-representation of certain object categories within datasets.
In the meanwhile, annotating such datasets entails a significant investment of time and technical expertise, often requiring the supervision of industry specialists. Complicating matters, images in this context are frequently blurry due to factors like lighting conditions, further hindering the recognition system’s ability to capture crucial details.
In fact, parallel to identifying “pollutants,” waste management customers express a desire to gain insights into the proportion of pollutants within a specific waste stream. This includes the need for a refined classification of pollutant constituents, allowing for a deeper understanding of waste quality and its potential for recycling.
Solution
Lixo offers an advanced sorting solution that utilizes computer vision technology to accurately and extensively classify waste materials. Powered by NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX, it efficiently handles data processing and inferencing tasks. The broad range of object detection capabilities includes PET (color and type of objects), HDPE, PP, LDPE, newspaper, magazine, print, greyboard, cardboard, dangerous or unwanted items, steel, aluminum, and green waste. Lixo encompasses two application scenarios, each providing a distinct workflow for the entire system.
Lixo Collector
The first scenario involves deploying the solution in garbage trucks for waste material collection and classification. Equipped with a camera near the garbage door, it can be triggered once the door is lifted instantly, and is capable of capturing three images per second, easily identifying wrongly sorted resources such as OMR bags, glass, and vegetable waste. Through time tracing on the dashboard, you can directly evaluate the sorting performance concerning awareness campaigns, analyzing source data by district and type of collection. The geographical analysis also allows for a comprehensive view of sorting errors, showcasing sorting quality based on type and collection point across the territory.
Lixo Sorting Center
In the second application, the system is implemented in waste sorting centers. Here, it efficiently analyzes the incoming flow of resources, estimating throughput, categorizing dangerous items, and evaluating the proportion of recyclables. It promptly sends alerts if any hazardous items are detected at the initial stage. After undergoing final sorting quality checks, the resources are processed further using a baling press machine. Any missed recyclables are directed to the residue line.
With its extensive capabilities, Lixo revolutionizes waste management by providing detailed insights, promoting efficient recycling, and ensuring the purity of waste flows. Currently, they are testing Jetson Orin NX for the full system with the expectation of a larger deployment in the future.
About Lixo
Lixo is an innovative company composed of a team of data scientists, engineers, and dedicated professionals. The mission of Lixo is to deliver cutting-edge, high-tech solutions to the waste management and recycling industry. By focusing on waste polarity and leveraging the principles of the circular economy, they strive to make a meaningful impact by effectively closing the loop and creating a sustainable future.
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