AI robotic sorting for heavy and industrial waste streams.
Photo credit: Waste Robotics
Waste Robotics, based in Trois-Rivières, Québec (with a Montréal office), builds AI robots for streams that packaging-line pickers often cannot handle: construction and demolition, bagged MSW, scrap metal (“meatballs” and circuit boards), wood fractions and mixed recyclables that need hyperspectral identification. Founded in 2016, the company is led by co-founder and CEO Éric Camirand.
Public deployments and quotes on wasterobotic.com include Altriom, Eco-Captation, Randy’s Sanitation / Republic, Millennium Recycling and Midwest Recycling Service, with sites listed across Canada, the US, France, Italy, Mexico, Iceland, Australia, South Korea, the UK and Belgium. A Solar Impulse label was awarded to an early bag-sorting system used in Québec City, Minneapolis and Dunkirk.
Heavy and bulky waste is landfilled in part because it is dangerous and irregular to sort by hand. Waste Robotics’ impact is diversion of C&D wood, metals and other fractions, plus bag opening/presort that gets organics and recyclables into the right downstream process. A Sorting-as-a-Service offer is meant to cut customer Capex.
Hyperspectral plus gripper AI is the technical wedge versus camera-only consumer-packaging robots.
* Founded 2016 in Trois-Rivières, Québec
* About $9.8–$12.4M total funding in industry databases; 2023 growth capital from Fondaction and Mirova (plus Fonds LLC)
* Earlier SDTC grant (~$1.4M) and seed capital
* Customer quote: three sorting arms at Midwest Recycling Service with “over 90% capture”
* Solar Impulse labelled bag-sorting system with multi-year runtime in Québec City and Minneapolis
* HQ: 11410 Louis-Loranger Blvd, Trois-Rivières, QC G9B 0T8
Heavy-stream grippers
End-of-arm tools are designed for bulky C&D, wood, bags and scrap rather than bottles alone.
Hyperspectral ID
Spectral signatures help separate materials that RGB cameras struggle to tell apart.
Sorting as a service
A SaaS-style robot programme is offered to reduce customer Capex and operating risk.
North America and Europe
Installations and partners are listed from Québec and the US Midwest to France and beyond.
Focus areas
Locations
