One to sort them all

DISBY™ is the world first automated Lego™ brick sorting system. It features a novel AI system that recognizes bricks based on a minimal formal description retrieved from the internet (e.g. size, weight and description). It will be capable of sorting over 1200 bricks per hour. The current prototype reached a speed of 500 bricks per hour.

The Lego™ brick ecosystem consists of over 150.000 different pieces that greatly vary in size and topology. The problem to sort bricks is very multi-dimensional with many challenges:

1. Brick segmentation: It is very hard to quickly and efficiently separate bricks in a single brick row , which is needed for recognition.

2. Brick recognition: Due to diverse bricks topology and the sheer number of different bricks it is impossible to simply teach the machine to detect each part

3. Brick sorting: Some kind of fast cache storage is needed

4. Long term storage: Automated long term storage for over 100.000 boxes

The prototype solved the first two tasks using very fast, durable and precise linear guides for igus.

1. Brick recognition: The ALTUMVI team developed an AI that is capable to efficiently recognize the bricks based on minimal formal brick definition that can be collected from the internet .

2. Brick sorting: Very fast and durable local storage cache was developed to facilitate over 140 different boxes

Features:

• Fully automated brick sorting.

• AI that auto recognizes bricks from minimal formal description.

• Local cache for 144 different brick types.

• Automated local cache emptying system.

• Prototype working 9 bricks per minute (final speed is aimed to be 20 bricks per minute or above).

• Designed for 24/7 operation.

All planning, software and hardware development and manufacturing was done by the ALTUMVI team in-house.

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