Amp installs its first robotic sorting units in Northern Ireland

Denver-based Amp Robotics Corp., a provider of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for the waste and recycling industry, has installed two AI-guided robotics systems at a Recyco facility in Northern Ireland.

According to a news release from Amp Robotics, the project includes two robots—a single Amp Cortex unit along with a tandem unit—installed on Recyco’s fiber lines for quality control to improve pick rates and bale purity. Recyco, which is headquartered in Northern Ireland, is the first deal that has been closed with Rep-Tec Advanced Technologies, Amp’s official reseller and integrator in the U.K. and Ireland. Amp adds that this is its first sale in the U.K.

“We’re delighted to bring our first robots to the U.K. and Ireland as we continue to see strong demand for our AI and automation solutions and build our pipeline in Europe,” says Gary Ashburner, European general manager for Amp. “Recyco has been a superb partner in this process and recognizes our technology addresses chronic staffing challenges it and many recyclers face, while aligning with its goals of maximizing recovery, increasing landfill diversion and advancing sustainability.”

According to Amp, its proprietary technology applies computer vision and deep learning to guide high-speed robotics systems to precisely identify, differentiate and recover recyclables found in the waste stream by color, size, shape and opacity. The technology stores data about each item it perceives.

The company says its sorting technology can pick up to 80 items per minute, and the company has recorded up to 150 picks per minute with its tandem units. The company’s AI platform can adapt to packaging introduced into the recycling stream with recognition capabilities to the brand level as well.

“Amp’s robots have quickly doubled the pick rates we were accustomed to, maintaining and even improving the purity of our bales, which we depend on to maximize prices with our end-market buyers,” says Michael Cunningham, owner and CEO of Recyco. “We’re proud to be leading the way for AI-powered recycling in these islands and look forward to continued gains in productivity and efficiency.”

“It’s great to have our first robotics installation go live this month, with the project running very smoothly from start to finish,” says Colm Grimes, founder and CEO of Rep-Tec. “We started the installation on a Friday evening, and by Sunday evening, we had both Cortex systems ready for the shift starting the next morning. We were blown away with the identification accuracy of the AI given this is Amp’s first installation in the U.K.”

Amp says it now has more than 160 systems installed globally, covering North America, Asia and Europe. The company’s AI platform, Amp Neuron, encompasses the largest known real-world dataset of recyclable materials for machine learning, with the ability to classify more than 100 different categories and characteristics of recyclables across single-stream recycling; e-scrap; and construction and demolition debris, and reaching an object recognition run rate of more than 10 billion items annually.