Press release: Making robots fit for the future of recycling

No. 133 - 03.09.2025

International research team including Göttingen University seeks adaptable automated solutions

Recycling textiles, cables and other “soft” materials has always been a complex procedure. Automation plays an important role in finding more efficient ways of doing this work. However, materials like this pose a real challenge for robots because they are flexible, fiddly and come in a variety of forms, which makes their properties difficult to predict for any automation system. An international research team including the University of Göttingen now plans to develop versatile solutions for automating soft material recycling. The European Union has funded the “FlexCycle” project for four years with around 7.5 million euros as part of their “Green Deal” programme of funding. The University of Göttingen will receive 1 million euros of this.

The twelve project partners from research and industry want to make robots that can handle a wide variety of materials and are therefore looking for solutions that will be universally applicable. The research team at Göttingen University is investigating three products which have very different structures: textiles, cables and fuel cell membranes. “We want to develop adaptable and transferable automation methods that enable fast and efficient transfer between different areas of soft material recycling,” says Professor Florentin Wörgötter at Göttingen University’s Institute of Biophysics. “We are working closely with the company Electrocycling.”

To process different materials with only minor adjustments to the robot, project partners are developing new, flexible robotic grippers and other multi-functional robotic tools. The biophysicists in Göttingen are developing the associated software. “We are using complex neural networks to work out the necessary recycling steps for the robot,” says Wörgötter.

Contact:

Professor Florentin Wörgötter

University of Göttingen

Faculty of Physics, Institute of Biophysics

Friedrich Hund Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany

Tel: +49 (0)551 39-26922

Email: worgott@gwdg.de