FlexCycle, an acronym for “Flexible robotic automation techniques for soft materials recycling”, is a new European project coordinated by the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) aimed at developing robotics and artificial intelligence solutions to make the life cycle of industrial products more sustainable. The goal is to enable the reuse of materials that are still difficult to process, particularly non-rigid ones, by creating an autonomous system capable of manipulating flexible materials and structures found in garments, electrical cables, and batteries, in order to disassemble products and recover reusable components.
The project brings together 12 partners, including universities and companies from six European countries, and has received €7.5 million in funding over four years. FlexCycle will focus on specific industrial sectors where robotics can play a key role in integrating flexible, AI-driven systems for handling non-rigid elements. These include the fashion industry, where fabrics and accessories such as buttons and zippers can be recovered from unsold garments; the electrical cable sector, where copper and other metals can be retrieved by removing insulating sheaths; and the recycling of fuel-cell batteries, which involves extracting soft membranes immersed in toxic substances.
In Italy, alongside IIT as project coordinator, the partners include qbrobotics, a robotics spin-off of the Institute, and OSIT Impresa SpA, a company active in the teenage apparel sector and known for the Subdued brand.
Further details are available in the official press release published on the IIT OpenTalk website LINK.