Artificial Intelligence & Optics LaboratorY – AIOLY

In 2050, France aims to achieve carbon neutrality through an ecological transition. At the heart of the key challenges of this transition, the circular economy relies on the reuse of resources, products, and waste to provide an alternative to the disposable model. Sorting, therefore, becomes a crucial aspect of the waste transformation and valorization sector.

Pellenc Selective Technologies offers intelligent machines for the optical control and sorting of waste. Today, these machines need to evolve to enable the sorting of a wider variety of complex waste and meet the growing demands for precision and separability in the future valorization processes. To support this transition, significant innovations in sensors and data analysis methods are necessary.

It is in this context that the AIOLY (Artificial Intelligence & Optics Laboratory) joint laboratory is established. AIOLY aims to harness the significant advances in Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Instrumental Optics to create intelligent spectroscopic sensors that will equip the next generations of waste sorting machines.

The AIOLY Labcom will address the following scientific issues:

How to process spectral data by integrating data analysis methods from AI with the knowledge of chemometrics?
How to optimize the acquisition of optical signals through optical instrumentation (hardware) for new AI-based processing approaches?

The AIOLY LabCom is a partnership between the UMR ITAP (INRAE) and Pellenc ST, two internationally recognized entities with complementary expertise in the design of optical sensors based on spectrometry and hyperspectral imaging, as well as in the analysis of in-situ spectroscopic data in complex environments.