Eco-IoT
Since 2018 the group NEO has participated in the national project Eco-Iot (RTC-2017-6714-5) in collaboration with three companies. The project’s objective is to optimise the process of plastic waste collection throught the use of machine learning and bio-inspired optimisation algorithms. For this purpose, the team designed an intelligent container equipped with sensors that crush the plastic waste in order to gain storage capacity and thus schedule longer collection intervals to minimise expenses. The data measured are sent to the cloud every fifteen minutes and are processed and used by the Eco-Iot Manager software system developed by the group NEO. This software enables predicting the generation of waste in the next few days and plan its collection in an efficient manner.
Three companies are participating in this project with the NEO group: the recycling plant of ACTECO in Alicante, the company EUROSOTERRADOS, in charge of manufacturing the containers, and the research institute CETEM, which has designed the sensors placed in the containers. At present several types of containers have been built, and will be deployed in hotels of the Valencian Community at the end of 2020.
When the project finalizes in 2021, we hope to promote amongst Spanish society a novel economic-productive model with university-business innovation using the circular economy for goods and service to reduce the waste of raw materials and providing a second useful life to the waste generated, by means of its reconversion in other types of products.
