Universal LEGO Sorting Machine

Calibrick

Check out Daniel West's universal LEGO sorting machine, if you've never heard of it:
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/303105-universal-lego-sorter-uses-ai-to-recognize-any-lego-brick

It's amazing, using over 10,000 LEGO elements ('cause of cause you build the LEGO sorter out of LEGO), Artifical Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML). The article says while he hasn't committed to ever releasing the machine's instructions, he is putting together a detailed paper on it and is open to releasing the AI software as open source.

Really, really extraordinary!! (and wow, what I wouldn't pay for that, lololol!)

brickrepository

It's a fun one alright, and I do enjoy the meta-ness of building a LEGO part sorter using LEGO parts. The use of ML for image recognition is also quite cool.
But realistically speaking, it's not very practical, is it?

Humans are still better than machines at LEGO sorting. For now...

Graham

That’s over 40,000 parts every 24 hours! Very neat. Only thing is limit of 18 bins

for a high volume used parts store this could actually be cost effective. Using a primary manual sort of large/small.

Perhaps even new parts imagine just opening up all the bags from sets dump ‘em in and go to bed. As long as you part multiple sets and sort by bag number, it could work with 18 bins.

Technic parts typically average 2 to 3 times more ppp than other parts so looking at 2-3k in parts to build it. Assuming all the parts are currently available. Add the electronics another +/- 1k. Add the software and design cost. Could be less than 5k all in.

Calibrick

I would definitely pay that to increase my throughput for adding new parts so I could become a higher volume and turnover store. I do all cleaning, sorting, and data entry by myself on top of a full-time, demanding job, so this would absolutely pay for itself IMHO.