In today’s world there are few graduates who see a future in working within waste management and as the current workforce ages and demand pay increases, big garbage collection firms will be looking towards artificial intelligence in order to help solve their staffing requirements.
An Irish waste tech company based in the sunny south east have developed an AI robot (named Aia, meaning artificial intelligence assistant) which can fulfill the roles of the routing/collections manager and eventually all office staff. “Aia can understand where vehicles are, what collections are done, access customer accounts details and more in real time - much faster and at a fraction of the cost of a human. We envision that Aia will become the central intelligence of the garbage company, handling all tasks and resources independently”. says Paul Kinsella, CEO of WIS.
AI Robots can do repetitive complex tasks seamlessly and consistently at the same high quality standard 24/7 - what the WIS team have done is brought this AI evolution into the waste management back office and made processes structured enough for the AI to understand and to learn from.
One of the major daily headaches for any garbage collector around the world is the management of collections and ensuring that every bin presented for collection gets collected. With Aia, collection routes are managed in real time, so the following actions are seamlessly possible:
- Contacting drivers the night before to advise them what truck they are due to drive tomorrow’s route in, especially vital if their normal truck is in for service or repairs.
- Contacting drivers if they have not started their route and completed their vehicle check reports within a set time frame e.g. 6.05am. Aia will call the driver to ask if there are any issues and if there are then Aia will take action on these and get them solved.
- Monitoring drivers route performance in real time. If Aia thinks that the route will not be completed or completed on time, it can call the driver and see if everything is ok. If for example the truck is broken down it will review other trucks ahead of schedule and reassigns them to help that route
- Providing real time data to call centre agents on where the truck is in relation to that bin, for example - the truck has passed customers location at 13.04 or the truck is expected at customers location between 11.00 : 12.00.
“AIA will change the way waste management businesses operate as more can be achieved with less” says Paul Kinsella. “In a nutshell AI is going to revolutionize the garbage collection industry and whether we like it or not robotics and AI are going to be widespread within all utility businesses shortly”, he continues.
About WIS / AIA
AIA is the new waste management artificial intelligence robot developed by the staff in WIS. WIS is an Irish company who are one of the global leaders in waste management software and hardware solutions. For more information visit www.wiswm.com