The recycling industry is seeing a boom in demand for paper products at the same time that the coronavirus pandemic has made it critical for workers to maintain social distance. Now some cities and municipalities are debating whether recycling should be considered an essential service amid the outbreak.
This presents an opportunity for robotics to help fill in the gaps left — literally — between human workers, Matanya Horowitz, founder AMP Robotics, told Cheddar.
"It gives the facilities different options for what they want to automate and what they want to keep manual," Horowitz said. "What a lot of facilities are doing right now is they are using robots to basically space out their workers."
Recycling plants are not easily adapted to meet social distancing guidelines, due to the highly manual nature of sorting and cleaning recycled materials.
"They have to worry a lot about worker safety in these facilities," Horowitz said. "The way a lot of these facilities are designed, a lot of the workers work pretty closely together, so social distancing isn't always easy to maintain."
AMP Robotics is making the case that robots can fill in the space between human workers who are tasked with weeding out trash from recycling materials. The robots use artificial intelligence to determine which products can be recycled and which should head to the landfill.
"There is a huge demand for all this recycled cardboard and paper and newspaper in the industry, essentially to supply things like toilet paper and new boxes due to everyone staying home and ordering all these things online," Horowitz said.
"Anywhere else that there may be an elevated risk to the sorters, we could potentially deploy a robot," he added.
Merriam-Webster has fully revised its popular “Collegiate” dictionary with over 5,000 new words. They include “petrichor,” “dumbphone” and “ghost kitchen.” Also “cold brew,” “rizz,” “dad bod,” “hard pass,” “cancel culture” and more.
YouTube will offer creators a way to rejoin the streaming platform if they were banned for violating COVID-19 and election misinformation policies that are no longer in effect.
Lukas Alpert of MarketWatch explores how networks, brands, and ad buyers absorb the shockwaves when late‑night show hosts are suddenly cut — and brought back.
A new poll finds U.S. adults are more likely than they were a year ago to think immigrants in the country legally benefit the economy. That comes as President Donald Trump's administration imposes new restrictions targeting legal pathways into the country. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey finds Americans are more likely than they were in March 2024 to say it’s a “major benefit” that people who come to the U.S. legally contribute to the economy and help American companies get the expertise of skilled workers. At the same time, perceptions of illegal immigration haven’t shifted meaningfully. Americans still see fewer benefits from people who come to the U.S. illegally.
