How multi-modal detection improves mixed-plastic recovery

Mixed-plastic recovery is often described as a sorting problem. More precisely, it is a confidence problem. A line can only separate material well if it can identify what it is looking at with enough certainty to act on that decision at production speed.

Why single-sensor logic reaches a limit

In straightforward streams, one sensing method may be enough. But once color, shape, contamination, labels, multilayer structure or dirt begin to overlap, single-sensor sorting starts to face ambiguity.

That ambiguity leads to two expensive outcomes: over-rejection, which lowers recovery, and under-rejection, which lowers output quality.

What multi-modal detection changes

• RGB vision can describe appearance and shape
• Spectral layers can provide composition clues
• Depth capture can improve geometric understanding
• Fusion logic can reduce false confidence in uncertain targets