The WEEE (waste from electrical and electronic equipment) management chain has realised an explosion of fire incidences, caused by carelessly discarded batteries into either recycling bins or black rubbish bags, where they are easily damaged by sorting equipment and start to burn, endangering human lives, disrupting waste services and causing millions of Euros of damage (from €190,000 up to €1.3m per fire incident). The Grinner project aims at commercialising an autonomous AI-enabled robotic sorting system capable of detecting and removing waste containing batteries from current waste streams before they enter inhospitable-to-battery machines that crush and consolidate waste. The system will comprise (i) the fastest Energy-resolved X-Ray detectors in the market, (ii) an ML-enabled software module that will analyse X-Ray data and effectively detect waste containing batteries while passing through the waste flow and vision-based pick-and-place robot(s) that will remove the flagged WEEE. Project objectives: • Build an X-Ray data set of WEEE scrap. • Customisation of the X-Ray system • Develop the AI software module for detection of batteries within WEEE using X-Ray data. • Deploy a vision-based robotic solution capable of Picking-and-Placing WEEE • Develop, integrate and install a prototype system in a WEEE facility environment to conduct live trials and validate Grinner. • Explore the potential exploitation of Grinner as an economically viable, stand-alone product for recycling facilities.

PARSEC is a project about parcel and letter security in the context of postal and express courier services. The project delivers an ambitious set of solutions by developing, configuring, customising, and piloting innovative tools, services and security management views to fight the abuse of postal and express courier flows for criminal and terrorist purposes. The four PARSEC innovation areas and three use cases strengthen risk analysis and redefine threat detection and resilience capabilities of parcel service providers, customs authorities, police agencies, and other relevant stakeholders. PARSEC develops and tests three next-generation non-intrusive detection technologies (multi-energy photon counting detector, neutron-induced gamma-ray spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction) and combine them into a detection architecture (= system-of-system) for optimal detection accuracy, speed and reliability. With PARSEC solutions postal and express operators, customs, and police authorities will be more capable to fight crime and terrorism, put in place a stronger deterrent, and to ensure safe and undisrupted postal and express services.