Shulou(Shulou.com)05/31 Report--

I believe you are already familiar with the garbage classification news recently passed in Shanghai? Recently, a child happened to be on a business trip to Shanghai and asked him if he had learned any advanced experience in Shanghai. As a result, his friend replied:

Well, the result of study is to learn not to throw rubbish in Shanghai, but in Hangzhou. The little detective will never encourage it!

Yes。 It seems that people are still "paying attention" to this kind of garbage classification!

Wouldn't it be bad if I showed you a way to throw out trash with your eyes closed instead of opening a Mini Program and searching for two minutes? what kind of garbage is recyclable, landfill and disposable?

Yes, Tan Xiao recently interviewed cleaning Robots, a startup that uses robots to help sort garbage, and asked them to tell you how robots can help people solve their problems!

"I'm also confused about how the garbage is sorted."

Just imagine, if you stand in front of the trash can and think for two minutes, and then throw away the rubbish in your hand, it is undoubtedly a waste of time. In this case, why can't we create a robot that automatically helps humans sort garbage?

Tanner Cook, co-founder and vice president of engineering, told Silicon Valley Insight that this was the original intention of cleaning robots.

Clean Robotics's product, founded in 2015, is an automatic garbage sorting robot TrashBot, with the following features:

Let the robot sort the garbage.

(junk Robot filmed in Hax Incubator, copyright owned by Silicon Valley Insight)

Doesn't it look like an ordinary trash can? Indeed, at first glance, the little detective also thought that in addition to the advanced shell, there was a display screen behind it, just like an upgraded trash can.

But from the inside, TrashBot is completely different. Because what it is doing is to use computer vision to detect garbage, and then use AI as an aid to automatically sort the garbage thrown out. As long as you see an opening open, you can throw rubbish in, one at a time.

At present, the garbage cans in garbage robots can classify two kinds of garbage, one is landfill (landfill), the other is garbage (non-recyclable garbage).

To explain a little bit, Silicon Valley includes San Francisco, and there are three main types of garbage at present (well, there are four categories of advanced garbage not as advanced as Shanghai!) :

Let the robot sort the garbage.

The first kind, the landfill, is the black trash can above. Waste that can neither be recycled nor used as composting material. The main types of garbage include: plastic bags, disposable cups, cups and straws, soda cups, plastic cups, non-composting cups, snacks, candy bags, styrofoam, ex-boyfriends and so on.

These are the worst rubbish because they have the greatest impact on the environment. As a result, Silicon Valley Insight previously reported that some clean materials start-ups are committed to replacing this garbage with new materials, such as reporting to her Majesty that I have found a plastic cup to eat!

The second kind, compostable (compostable garbage), is mainly thrown into the trash can with green on it. Refers to waste that can be made into fertilizer after microbial fermentation. What is common: food waste! Yes, such as leftover or rotten vegetables, fruits, eggshells, meat bones, seafood, bread, dairy products, soup, coffee grounds and so on. There are all kinds of flowers and leaves.

The third category, recycling, throw blue trash can. I believe you are no stranger to this. What is recyclable garbage? It is nothing more than all kinds of paper, cartons, plastic bottles for drinks, beer bottles, newspapers, magazines and other paper products.

One thing to remind you, this is the same as the domestic recycling rules, that is, if there are all kinds of beverage bottles, there is no liquid, that is, after the liquid is poured out, throw it away.

Although Tan Xiao has introduced so many kinds of garbage classification so carefully, I believe you may say: Tan Xiao, I am not in Silicon Valley! Why are you telling me so much?!

In fact, this is the second pain point of garbage classification: except that the rules can not be remembered, the rules of garbage in different cities are different.

The trash can "brain" can customize different rules.

So how does the garbage robot of the cleaning robot want to solve these two pain points? First of all, you can't remember the rules. You don't have to remember the rules. As soon as you see an open garbage door, throw the rubbish in. The robot will automatically classify you.

Tanner told Silicon Valley Insight that everyone is familiar with recyclable waste, which is why there are only two types of trash cans built at the Hax incubator in San Francisco: landfill and compostable.

The second pain point is that different cities have different rules for garbage classification, which is difficult to remember. In fact, this is also the problem that China's major cities are about to face.

For example, after the introduction of corresponding garbage collection rules in Shanghai, big cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen quickly followed suit. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development announced that garbage sorting will be implemented in 46 key cities across the country.

Among them, Beijing, Shanghai, Taiyuan, Changchun, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Guangzhou, Yichun, Yinchuan and other places have issued regulations on the management of domestic waste, clearly bringing garbage classification into the framework of the rule of law. Among them, Beijing is the first legislative city, but its garbage recycling rules are different from those of Shanghai.

Tan Xiao never encourages you to take Shanghai garbage back to Hangzhou to throw away like Tan Xiao's friends, but you can't remember it every time you go on a business trip.

What is the difference in garbage classification between Shanghai and Beijing?

Because the operation of TrashBot is to identify different trash entering the trash bin through the camera, and then use the AI algorithm to classify items into their respective waste or recyclable trash bins. "the AI algorithm can be adjusted at any time, or it can be customized for a city."

Tanner tells Silicon Valley Insight, for example, that even cities like San Francisco and San Jose, which are only an hour's drive away, have different recycling requirements. For example, the red plastic cups we see at parties are recyclable in San Francisco, but not recyclable in San Jose.

So, customizable garbage collection rules are important, so let the robot's brain turn on its own.

So, how many kinds of garbage can TrashBot sort now? Tanner said that more than 110 kinds of garbage can now be sorted, and the accuracy of garbage classification is 90%. It is expected that the accuracy will be further improved with the increase of data sets in the future.

The main customers are enterprises, which can reduce garbage charges by 50%.

Doesn't that sound good, but from the price point of view, it hurts a little bit.

What's the price of such a trash can? Tanner told Silicon Valley Insight that the current price of the trash can depends on the customer's demand for the product, such as whether there is a screen or not. The screen is mainly used as a reminder, such as sorting garbage, or reminding that the liquid should be dumped before throwing the bottle. However, it will not be too different from the price of normal enterprises for garbage disposal and buying better trash cans.

Tanner revealed that the average corporate customer buys trash bins for between $1200 and $7000. It depends on the number of trash cans, the number of floors placed, and so on. Compared with the price on the market, the price of Clean Robotics is in the middle.

Let the robot do the garbage sorting.

Yes, according to Tanner, Clean Robotics's current business customers, such as airports, shopping malls, stadiums, etc., are suitable for screens. If it is an outdoor place, it mainly depends on all kinds of stickers on TrashBot. The cost of the whole package without a screen is naturally lower. For example, at present, TrashBot has been launched at Pittsburgh International Airport and a large stadium in Pittsburgh, and a shopping mall in Sydney, Australia, is also their customer.

Since Clean Robotics is mainly aimed at 2B (enterprise-oriented) customers, these companies naturally have a higher budget for waste disposal than the average household. For existing customers, Clean Robotics has calculated that the cost can be reduced by up to 50% based on the entire waste disposal cost of the enterprise.

How much do you charge for garbage disposal? Take Silicon Valley as an example. Garbage collection and collection in San Francisco and Silicon Valley are signed with Recology, a waste management company. At a fixed time every week, Recology will collect it according to different types of garbage. In addition to facing families, corporate customers also have to pay for garbage.

Let the robot do the garbage sorting.

But unlike families, corporate customers charge according to their garbage volume, and corporate users can enjoy discounts on the use of green (compostable) and blue trash bins (recyclable). The discount can be up to 75% (depending on how much garbage you have eventually recycled). However, once recyclable materials are found to end up in landfill bins, enterprises will also be punished accordingly.

Consider developing a family trash can plan.

After the Shanghai garbage sorting regulations came out, did Clean Robotics notice this huge business opportunity?

Tanner tells Silicon Valley Insight that there is indeed. Recently, the company has received contact from customers from many places, such as Shanghai, Shandong and so on. And the company CEO is also on a business trip in China. However, when developing products for individual consumers, there are two main problems:

The first big problem is how to reduce the cost of products (after all, a family will not spend tens of thousands of rmb to buy a trash can.) The second big problem is how to improve the accuracy of recovery.

So how does Clean Robotics solve the first problem? Because Clean Robotics has been incubated by Hax, a world-renowned hardware incubator, and Hax has set up an office and corresponding incubator in Shenzhen, Tanner said that if mass production is carried out, the cost of the robot can certainly be reduced and materials will be adjusted to Chinese customers and the market. Hax is also helping to find suitable manufacturers in China and is expected to carry out mass production this year.

With regard to accuracy, Tanner believes that compared with reducing the cost of the hardware, the accuracy of recognition must be the most important, and it may require up to 99% of the accuracy to be accepted by families. Therefore, they need to constantly improve the input of visual recognition and AI data sets, so as to increase the accuracy of recognition. This is the process that the team is working hard, and at present the team is also in the stage of rapidly expanding enrollment. However, Xiaopan has to admire that this start-up with only five people has made a profit.

In the words of Xiaopan, early garbage collection really requires everyone's efforts, such as using robots to start recycling garbage, but the whole follow-up garbage disposal process should also keep up, otherwise it will be recycled and mixed up again. This is not a waste of so much energy and effort in the early stage. Has your city started sorting garbage yet? What inconveniences do people feel when recycling rubbish?

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