ARIS Robotics joins the StartUp Hub
The robotics company ARIS Robotics joined the Odense Robotics StartUp Hub at the Danish Technological Institute this month. Co-founder and CEO Sina Pour Soltani explains why the startup decided to apply to the Hub and how they are developing an autonomous system to sort consumer waste, focused on centralised pre-sorting of landfill waste from recycling facilities, which will increase sorting efficiency and improve the quality of recycled materials, while reducing recyclable waste.
Can you describe your technology and why it’s unique?
ARIS Robotics is developing an autonomous system to sort consumer waste, currently focused on centralised pre-sorting of landfill waste from recycling facilities. Our system uses Deep Learning and image-based classification to detect and sort waste with high precision and recall rates. Increasing sorting efficiency will increase the quality and lifespan of recycled materials and reduce the amount of recyclable waste that ends up in landfills.
Why did you apply to join the Hub and what do you hope to achieve during your stay?
For one thing it is very awesome to work in the epicentre of the robotics ecosystem and work close to other interesting startups experiencing the same challenges as us. We became part of Odense Robotics StartUp Hub to gain access to the prototype testing facilities and the many robotics experts. Additionally, we hope to access technical expertise as well and develop a funding strategy.
During our stay in the Hub, we hope to mature our company and finish our full-scale prototype, so that we can test and demonstrate the performance of our solution at our use case on landfill waste with Odense Renovation.
What’s your greatest challenges and opportunities?
Our greatest challenge lies in porting our technology from the safe and controlled environment of a research project to a real-world application and testing how much our technology can impact industries with linear waste streams. We really have ample opportunity to extend or introduce circularity at recycling facilities and companies with linear waste streams by sorting their waste in an automatic and intelligent way. Thereby we increase the lifespan of materials and reduce the amount of waste that needlessly ends up in landfills.
How did your company start and who is part of the team today?
We discovered that some multi-holed trash cans in public spaces sometimes end up in the same trash bags. ”There has to be a smarter way,” we thought and set about building a self-sorting trash can for our bachelor project at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) in spring 2020. Having completed the project with impressive results, we shared a demo and received a lot of interest from the industry. We decided to look for a product market fit in a sector where we could impact the environment in a positive direction. We founded ARIS Robotics upon landing on our specific use case.
The team consists of Sina Pour Soltani, Christian Eberhardt and Ann-Mia Ambjerg. Sina and Christian studied Advanced Robotic Technology at SDU, while Ann-Mia is currently finishing her Master’s in International Business at Copenhagen Business School. At ARIS Robotics, Sina will focus on high level programming and AI, Christian on embedded programming, and Ann-Mia on their business development.
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Learn more about the StartUp Hub:
Peter Smedegaard, Business Development Manager, Startups, Odense Robotics
Phone: +45 92 82 52 02, mail: [email protected]