This week, Google announced that it has trained robots to sort through office trash and remove items that should go in recycling or the compost bin. The breakthrough came from Google X's Everyday Robot Project, an open-ended research initiative aimed at trying to integrate robots into daily life. Over the last few months, Google's office robots have decreased waste contamination levels from 20 percent to just five percent. Waste contamination levels are a measure of how much improperly sorted material there is mixed into the trash. For the trash sorting project, Google's decided that instead of trying to write complicated instructions for how to identify different kinds of items, they would see if the robots could just figure things out through trial and error.