AI machine 'helps save 25 million Lego bricks'

An artificial intelligence-powered sorting machine has helped save 25 million Lego bricks from landfill, a company has said.

WeBuyBricks, based at Hall Carr Mill in Rawtenstall, Lancashire, buys unwanted Lego before cleaning and sorting the pieces so they can be sold again.

Its Brick-O-Matic uses cameras, artificial intelligence and jets of air to identify individual pieces and has capacity to sort up to 100,000 of them a day, according to the firm.

Head of projects Brad Hacking said automating the process was essential because sorting large quantities of mixed Lego by hand was "really difficult".

Boxes of mixed Lego are put into the machine before the pieces pass beneath camera systems which use AI and machine-learning software to identify them.

Hacking said the system could recognise more than 60,000 different Lego pieces.

Once identified, jets of air direct the pieces into different chutes so they can be used to make up sets again.

He said the machine could process two pieces a second and claimed it was more than 100 times more efficient than sorting the Lego manually.

There are currently more than 10 tonnes of Lego at the Rawtenstall site waiting to be processed, he added.

The company says it believes the Brick-O-Matic is the first machine of its type in the UK.

Hacking said the network of conveyor belts and air jets had developed from an initial idea into something which "does feel very Willy Wonka or Wallace and Gromit".

The system can also tell staff how complete a Lego set is.

Hacking said that if a set was missing five or 10 pieces, the machine could be set to look specifically for them as more Lego passed through it, or staff could buy the missing pieces elsewhere.

Star Wars and Harry Potter are among the most popular themes handled by the business, alongside Marvel and DC sets.

Hacking said it also received rare, vintage and retired Lego.

All the Lego is cleaned, checked for authenticity and has foreign objects removed before it is resold, he said.

One of the company's aims was to make Lego more affordable, he said, with sets on its website offered for between 40% and 60% less than their new price.

Hacking said the business wanted consumers to become as comfortable buying pre-owned Lego as they had become with buying used clothes.

As well as complete sets, the company sells bundles of loose bricks, such as pieces of a particular colour for projects or people building their own designs.

The technology is operating inside a building with its own industrial history.

Hacking said Hall Carr Mill, in its current form, dated from 1872 and had not been fully used since around the mid-to-late 1990s.

He said the company had considered moving into newer industrial premises elsewhere in Lancashire but wanted to remain locally so it could retain staff, some of whom had worked for the business for many years.

WeBuyBricks grew out of used-book business WeBuyBooks, which Hacking described as its parent company.

He said there was something fitting about installing modern AI technology in an old mill because the looms operating there in the late 1800s would themselves have been at the forefront of technology.

"We're feeling like we're just reinvigorating it for the modern age," he said.

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