The accumulative and poorly reversible nature of plastic pollution has wide-reaching impacts on our global environment. To counteract the problem and achieve sustainability, recycling efforts of plastic products need to be given greater attention. Instead of relying on people’s initiative to recycle plastic bottles in non-mobile machines, this project aims to develop a mobile bottle-recycling robot with automatic identification and compression. The robot incorporates four main functions, an object detection program to identify plastic bottles, a chassis with four Mecanum wheels to move to the desired location, a conveyor belt unit to transport the bottle to the inside chamber, and an actuation unit to compress the bottle. The whole procedure can either operate automatically or be controlled manually. The developed robot frees manpower and human initiative from the process and decreases the cost of transportation through compression, providing both economic and environmental value. In the future, a larger database and improved functions of the robot will enhance the recycling results. This project brings an outlook on the future method of bottle recycling that is both economically efficient and environmentally friendly.

Chloe Zhu. Mobile Bottle-Recycling Robot with Automatic Identification and Compression. International Journal of Frontiers in Engineering Technology (2024), Vol. 6, Issue 5: 145-155. https://doi.org/10.25236/IJFET.2024.060520.

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