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“Artificial Intelligence,” said Stephen Hawking, “will beman’s greatest achievement, too bad it could be the last.”

It is part of our daily life and is now used in large Italian and foreign companies. We are talking about Artificial Intelligence and the infinite ways in which it can be used in professional or recreational activities.

To simplify, we can define Artificial Intelligence as the ability of a technological system to solve problems or perform tasks and activities typical of the human mind and ability. Who doesn’t know voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri or, for example, driverless cars? Each of us, at least once in our lives, has found ourselves asking Alexa for the time or the weather forecast for Siri.

But the lesser-known examples of how AI can be applied to our lives could be endless. Intelligent algorithms are an integral part of our routine. They suggest products to buy, movies or music in line with our tastes, they know how to answer customer questions via chat, they can recognize a person’s face to enable access, sort documents based on content, filter resumes to select the ideal candidate. And we could go on for hours.

The enormous potential of Artificial Intelligence can even be exploited for “intelligent” waste collection. The Melita Group, whose core business is dedicated exclusively to the provision of M2M and IoT connectivity solutions, has invented a system to make garbage bins smart that allow communication with a centralized monitoring platform by reporting the status of their load to the latter.

These garbage cans are also distributed in more less urbanized areas and require the use of battery-powered sensors. The solution is not only intended to ensure clean and available garbage cans, but also to make collection more efficient.

Garbage trucks and staff are directed to bins that need to be emptied as opposed to a normal fixed routine.

This shortens driving distances and reduces fuel consumption and emissions, with significant benefits for the environment as well.

The bins, in fact, are equipped with sensors that monitor the volume of waste and therefore the level of filling. The information is then instantly transmitted to the operations center , alerting you when and if it is time to collect waste.

This technology is alreadyused in many cities aroundthe world from San Francisco to Copenhagen to Netanya, Israel and the company that produces the smart sensors is called NordSense and was founded by Manuel Maestrini who has installed more than 1,000 smart bins in San Francisco with an 80 percent reduction in full bins and 66 percent in specific requests for street cleaning. Maestrini explained that its technology reduces collection costs and emissions by 50 percent:

“It takes about 30 seconds to empty a bin that isn’t full. If, on the other hand, the basket is overflowing, it takes much more.”

The time and cost also increase when the trash is dumped on the ground, next to the bin because that bin has not been emptied. Collection vehicles can plan the route by going directly to the bins that actually need to be emptied, avoiding unnecessary stops that involve wasting time, resources and traffic.

Even in Italy, some cities, especially in the north of the country, are experimenting with this type of technology.

In Milan, Amsa, the A2A Group company that manages the environmental hygiene service throughout the public sector, has placed 12,550 “smart” bins, developed with Cefriel-Politecnico di Milano, a subsidiary of the Politecnico specialising in digital innovation projects. The containers are located in the streets and squares of all nine municipalities, excluding the green areas, where there are traditional bins, but the project is still in the testing phase and the analyses to acquire data are still underway.