Dive Brief:
- EverestLabs, known for its AI-enabled robotic sorting systems for MRFs, has launched Navigator, a multi-agent platform meant to help operators interpret equipment data in more interactive and hands-on ways.
- Navigator allows users to more directly interact with their sorting equipment data, ask specific questions and get recommendations for how to proceed. It offers chat functions, the ability to build custom alerts, and settings for troubleshooting and throughput improvement, the company said.
- EverestLabs is piloting the new technology with Caglia Environmental, a California recycler that has previously piloted other EverestLabs technology. Other pilot participants include Pellenc ST, which designs and builds optical sorting equipment, and Schneider Electric, which offers a range of energy technology.
Dive Insight:
MRF operators have been adding robotics equipment into their facilities for years as a way to improve commodities quality and productivity. These systems typically gather mountains of data for users to interpret. EverestLabs says it’s among the first robotics companies to offer this kind of agentic artificial intelligence to interpret that data.
EverestLabs has been offering its AI-powered robotics sorter since 2021. In recent years, its customers have been asking for tools to help interpret their sorting and throughput data in clearer ways, including around throughput, equipment troubleshooting and commodity quality, said Chief Product Officer Apurba Pradhan.
As extended producer responsibility for packaging laws take shape around the country, MRF operators are also responding to changing regulations about what materials they should be sorting or accepting at their facilities, he said.
“We've had a lot of working experience in how these plants operate, what kind of problems they have, and we've been trying to figure out how to help them solve it. A lot of the solutions don't come from robots; they come from AI,” he said.
EverestLabs’ customers typically use dashboard screens to look at data related to the robotics’ performance. Navigator is designed to go beyond the robot’s automation functions to help directly coordinate equipment and operational workflows instead of just offering data on a screen, said JD Ambati, the company’s founder and chief strategy officer, in a statement.
“Navigator will be an AI process engineer, a data analyst and a controls specialist working for facility operators who have relied on manual guesswork for far too long,” Ambati said.
For example, an operator who wants to remedy a contamination issue on a particular line could use Navigator to help look upstream and downstream to get insight on what could be causing the problem, Pradhan said.
Or, a user could use Navigator to examine current PET sorting operations, then ask the tool to predict the value of PET gains or losses over time through a series of customized charts or graphs.
The idea is that an operator can interact with Navigator “as if he's interacting with one of his employees,” Pradhan added. “We're tying that reasoning into equipment controls and also the workflow for that operator. So we can change recipes, we can change settings on different pieces of equipment.”
Navigator is built on combined AI tools the company says have not operated as one system before, such as edge-vision models that track material on the belt, vision-language models that interpret material streams, and the reasoning and conversational models that allow for user engagement.
Pradhan said Navigator is meant to help improve facility throughput and reduce downtime, but the full range of what the AI agents can do is up to users. Pilot programs at companies like Caglia Environmental will offer more insights into how Navigator can work, he said.
“Navigator has removed the guesswork from our daily operations and makes our MRF a fully AI run and managed plant,” said plant manager Corey Stone in a statement. “It takes the complexity out of data analytics, giving us immediate, actionable answers that drive productivity so we can focus on keeping safety our top priority."
