The world is a gigantic landfill! Everyday tons of waste are generated from various households, hospitals, industries, construction and demolition sites and more. While today we have numerous ways to get rid of the accumulated waste, it still ends up affecting the safety and sustainability of the ecological system. Therefore, the best alternative is to reuse and recycle as much waste as possible. And offering an extra pair of hand in this are waste sorting and recycling robots.

Every year trash companies sift through an estimated 68 million tons of recycling, which is the weight equivalent of more than 30 million cars. A key step in the process happens on fast-moving conveyor belts, where workers have to sort items into categories like paper, plastic and glass. Such jobs are dull, dirty, and often unsafe, especially in facilities where workers also have to remove normal trash from the mix. With that in mind, a team led by researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has developed a robotic system that can detect if an object is paper, metal, or plastic. The team's "RoCycle" system includes a soft Teflon hand that uses tactile sensors on its fingertips to detect an object's size and stiffness.