exist Women 2026 Renuka Velu
AI Powered Waste Sorting for Canteens and Restaurants
In most cafeterias and restaurants, food, paper and plastic waste from used plates is still sorted manually. This is time consuming, error prone and expensive, especially during busy periods. Valuable materials end up being incinerated instead of recycled, and staff spend a lot of time on repetitive tasks. I am developing a compact AI module that integrates at the tray return point and uses computer vision to automatically identify and sort waste into the correct containers, reducing errors and improving recycling rates.
Academic field: Computer vision, sustainable robotics, and circular economy
Vision:
My vision is to build a scalable, retrofit friendly solution that starts at the tray return point and expands to university canteens, and restaurants. The system should be easy to integrate into existing kitchens without major changes. Over time, I want to offer operators simple dashboards showing sorting quality and waste volumes, making sustainable practices the standard rather than the exception in food service.
The problem is real, widespread and largely unsolved, and I have the technical background in computer vision and AI to build a working solution and bring it to market.
Personal superpower:
I have strong technical skills in computer vision and AI, I stay calm when everything is on fire, and I have a talent for explaining very nerdy things to very non-nerdy people.