Two Glacier techniques at work in an MRF in Chicago. The robots can type as much as 45 objects per minute. | Supply: Areeb Malik, co-founder of Glacier, on LinkedIn
Glacier, which makes use of synthetic intelligence and robotics to effectively type recyclable supplies, at this time introduced that it has raised $16 million in Sequence A funding. The corporate additionally mentioned Recology’s King County Materials Restoration Facility, or MRF, in Seattle has deployed a fleet of its AI recycling robots.
San Francisco-based Glacier mentioned this funding caps a breakthrough interval throughout which it expanded its presence to markets together with San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, and Phoenix.
“The funding just isn’t solely an unimaginable testomony to this development trajectory that we’re on, on our quest to allow round manufacturing; however we’re utilizing the funding in a few notable methods,” Rebecca Hu-Thrams, co-founder and CEO of Glacier, advised The Robotic Report. “The primary is simply to make our {hardware}, together with our robotic and our imaginative and prescient techniques, more and more extra scalable and quicker to deploy.”
Glacier has assembled robots to sort out the unpredictable nature of recycling streams. Its laptop imaginative and prescient and AI know-how should determine and kind over 30 several types of supplies, which might vary from frequent objects resembling PET plastic and aluminum cans to particular packaging varieties like toothpaste tubes, cat meals tins.
Glacier builds out information flywheel
Hu-Thrams mentioned that Glacier has more and more been its recycling robots and AI information as two components of the identical flywheel. The information makes the robots higher and extra correct, whereas the robots collect extra information with each decide they make.
“What we’re actually centered on now’s constructing out that flywheel and likewise understanding how we will harness that information to resolve issues that will even be agnostic of what the robotic is instantly meant to deal with,” Thrams mentioned. “Our final imaginative and prescient is for Glacier to change into a device that may be an working system for these recycling amenities.”
The Ecosystem Integrity Fund (EIF) led the spherical. It additionally included participation from current buyers together with New Enterprise Associates (NEA), AlleyCorp, Overture Local weather VC, Amazon Local weather Pledge Fund, and VSC Ventures.
New buyers in Glacier included Elysium, Overlap Holdings, Cox Exponential, Alumni Ventures, One Small Planet, and Working Capital Fund.
Closing the round manufacturing loop
To grasp Glacier’s long-term targets, you first want to grasp how the recycling worth chain works. It begins with placing recycling bins out on the curb. As soon as it’s there, the recyclables are picked up by a truck and brought to an MRF, Hu-Thrams mentioned.
“The job of that MRF is to principally to take that big pile of commingled recycling, a lot of which can also be trash, and kind it into constituent commodities as successfully as potential,” she defined. “So if the sorting course of had been good, you’ll find yourself with these stunning bales of paper, cardboard, plastics, aluminum cans, and so forth that these MRFs might promote to finish market producers to show into new stuff. Now, the sortation course of, as you may most likely think about, is extraordinarily cumbersome. It’s very costly, as a result of a lot of it’s nonetheless really completed with handbook labor.”
MRFs expertise extraordinarily excessive ranges of turnover, and if most MRFs can’t discover the workforce, they will’t type the waste into usable supplies. Hu-Thrams mentioned that Glacier is making an attempt to shut the loop in round manufacturing.
Ideally, supplies from recycling bins go to a facility, the place they’re damaged down into their particular person parts, repackaged, and delivered to a producing plant to be made into one thing else. Proper now, nevertheless, there’s a damaged hyperlink on this circle: the MRFs.
“Take into consideration what these MRFs are doing: They’re taking in feedstock, after which their job is to supply a sure yield at a sure high quality fee, and do all the high quality inspection you count on out of a typical manufacturing plant,” Hu-Thrams mentioned. “And but, they’ve so many fewer instruments than one thing like a plastic bottling plant.”
“They nonetheless have a heavy reliance on handbook labor,” she added. “They nonetheless have little by means of information at scale to assist them audit their processes and enhance effectivity. That’s actually the hole that Glacier is looking for to fill for them.”
Recycling poses sortation challenges
Glacier mentioned its robotic prices half as a lot as standard choices and requires simply 3 ft. of conveyor area. | Supply: Glacier
MRFs are coping with an extremely heterogeneous stream of supplies which might be soiled and really troublesome to type. This has introduced many challenges for corporations hoping to automate the method. First, earlier than Glacier, different recycling sortation techniques used off-the-shelf robots, which had been usually too costly for the MRF, famous Hu-Thrams.
“Secondly, numerous these models had been simply bodily massive and really space-consuming in an setting that could be very space-constrained,” she added. “Think about a robotic that takes up the area of three to 4 sorters on a form line and does the job of 1.”
Lastly, MRFs, like manufacturing vegetation, stay or die primarily based on their upstream,” Hu-Thrams mentioned. “This implies they require very dependable techniques that may keep working regardless of the extremely variable materials stream.
“They’re not simply processing bottles and cans and paper, but additionally seeing issues like Christmas lights and surfboards and microwaves and automotive motors and even issues like weapons and hand grenades,” she mentioned. “How do you design a system that’s versatile sufficient to work successfully with that type of materials stream? For this reason we determined that purpose-built was the way in which to go.”
Glacier makes use of off-the-shelf parts from dependable OEMs, Hu-Thrams mentioned. The firm sourced these components independently to place collectively a robotic that’s compact, has a excessive uptime, and a quicker return on funding (ROI). In actual fact, Hu-Thrams mentioned a lot of Glacier’s clients have gotten their ROI in lower than a yr. For recycling, a three-year turnaround could be thought-about quick, she mentioned.
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Glacier helps MRFs get probably the most from the information it gathers
All through our dialog, Hu-Thrams emphasised Glacier’s dedication to placing its clients’ wants first. That is true relating to prices, uptime, fee fashions, clients’ rights to service their robots, and, maybe most significantly, AI.
“We’ll go to our recycling facility clients and ask them, what are the commodities, or the sorts of issues, that you simply care probably the most about?” Hu-Thrams mentioned. “We’ve really used that method to flesh out the way in which that we’re constructing our AI taxonomy.”
For instance, Glacier works to seek out methods for its clients to make use of their information to enhance the general effectivity of the plant. “As we’ve grown out our database and as we’ve grown out the capabilities of AI, we’re really seeing numerous clients utilizing the information as a standalone product, like a typical manufacturing plant,” Hu-Thrams mentioned.
“We’ve really helped quite a few clients determine and quantify as much as 1,000,000 {dollars} in incremental income they’re at the moment sending to the landfill yearly, after which we will help them fine-tune their plan and see real-time the place these adjustments made any impression to their general restoration fee,” she continued.
Trying ahead, Hu-Thrams mentioned that she hopes Glacier gained’t simply be a robotics or an AI information firm, but additionally a accomplice to assist recycling amenities resolve top-line points. For instance, if a buyer was having issues with contamination in its paper stream, then Glacier might set up imaginative and prescient techniques and robots in strategic places to assist enhance its purity fee.
“We now, maybe for the primary time, can actually assist these amenities perceive in actual time, on the merchandise stage, what’s getting in, what’s popping out of their bales, and what’s being ejected to the landfill,” mentioned Hu-Thrams. “We give them this restoration device to truly be sure that they’re selecting in a specific means.”
