{"id":773431,"date":"2026-09-17T08:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/773431\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T08:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:30:09","slug":"ai-machine-helps-save-25-million-lego-bricks-from-landfill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/773431\/","title":{"rendered":"AI machine &#8216;helps save 25 million Lego bricks from landfill&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Boxes of mixed Lego are put into the machine before the pieces pass beneath camera systems which use AI and machine-learning software to identify them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hacking said the system could recognise more than 60,000 different Lego pieces.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Once identified, jets of air direct the pieces into different chutes so they can be used to make up sets again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said the machine could process two pieces a second and claimed it was more than 100 times more efficient than sorting the Lego manually.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There are currently more than 10 tonnes of Lego at the Rawtenstall site waiting to be processed, he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The company says it believes the Brick-O-Matic is the first machine of its type in the UK.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hacking said the network of conveyor belts and air jets had developed from an initial idea into something which &#8220;does feel very Willy Wonka or Wallace and Gromit&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boxes of mixed Lego are put into the machine before the pieces pass beneath camera systems which use&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":773432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-773431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/773432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}