Robotic Manipulation and Sorting of Waste Flows

In order to facilitate the closing of the lifecycle of materials LCE and ACRO, two KU Leuven research groups, are collaborating in the European project AUSOM. This project focusses on the sorting process of metal scrap, an activity that is currently driven by expensive manual handling. The aim of this PhD-research is to investigate and develop a robust system for robotic manipulation and sorting of waste stream such as, for example, metal scrap. Based on the study and tests of existing gripping techniques, robotic end effectors are designed and optimized. Cost and speed analysis check the performance of the end effectors. In addition to the end-effectors, the sorting strategy is also being developed. This allows a robot to efficiently move objects to a collection container to separate the different kind of materials. Finally, the subsystems will be merged into a sorting system in which all the subsystems together provide an efficient high speed sorting system.