Murphy the recycling robot

Move over R2-D2, there’s a new droid in town, although it’s better at sorting plastic than projecting holograms. Meet Murphy, the robotic recycler making big moves at the MSU Surplus Store and Recycling Center.

Officially called MRF-E — short for Material Recovery Facility Equipment — Murphy is part Wall-E, part Jedi. With “eyes,” a “brain” and a mechanical arm, the robot scans conveyor belts of mixed recyclables, identifies what it sees and grabs plastics that can be transformed into new products. As Recycling Coordinator David Smith explains, “The robot sees the material, sends an image to the brain, and the brain tells the arm, ‘Hey, go grab that water bottle and drop it in the right bin.’” It does this up to 80 times per minute.

Murphy is powered by an AI system trained on millions of images to recognize recyclable materials with accuracy. Smith calls it “a calculated decision happening in a split second,” which makes sense when you’re dealing with thousands of moving objects and the occasional rogue yogurt cup.

The benefits aren’t just sci-fi cool — they’re substantial. Murphy helps MSU:

• Keep workers safe: “The average person on the line moves about 14,000 pieces a day,” Smith says. “That’s a lot of repetitive motion and exposure to broken glass and other hazards. The less often people have to touch that material, the better.”
• Increase efficiency: With human pickers averaging 40 items per minute, Murphy works twice as fast and never calls in sick.
• Enhance sustainability: MSU’s Material Recovery Facility (a.k.a. the “Murph”) processed nearly 6 million pounds of recyclable materials last year. Murphy helps sort out PET bottles and polypropylene containers from the recycling stream which are then sent to manufacturers who use them as a raw material to make new products.
• Save money: The $270,000 investment (partially funded by a state grant) helps pay dividends. MSU brought in $300,000 in recycled material sales last year alone.

Murphy even plays a role in education. “We’ve had engineering students work with the manufacturer, AMP Robotics, on design projects,” Smith says. “They’ve done research, tinkered with the programming and even helped with maintenance. It’s hands-on learning, literally with a robot.”

Despite the robot’s industrial appearance — “It looks like a piece of machinery that you’d see at GM,” Smith said — its presence is turning heads and helping reshape how Spartans think about waste.

Smith sums it up best: “Ten years ago, this was a sketch on paper. Now it’s a tool we rely on every day.”

The value of Murphy is clear, and there’s no question: the Force of sustainability is strong with this one.