SensAI to Enable and Enhance the E in CE

Amit Kumar Mishra (Professor, Electrical Engineering Department, University of Cape Town; Email: akmishra@ieee.org)

A very short story!

Last year I had a burnt gasket in my second-hand Audi (1997-made). The damage was bad and, being Audi, the price to fix it was exuberant. I had to sell it for just $400!

What went wrong?

This personal story shows a range of things that are hindering a circular economy (CE).

• Why was the damage so bad? Because there was no way to know how worn out the components in the car are.
• Why was the price so low? Because it was being sold as a “car”. This is a classic example of how in terms of consumer goods, the sum is always lesser than the parts! There was no way it could be sold as parts. There was no way to know how much each of the parts would have cost. There was no way to check the utility of each of the parts. There was no way to know who may need those parts.
• Why did the author not sell just the metal to a recycling plant? It would mostly have fetched a higher price. There was no easy option to do that and it would have been a CE blunder.

The E of CE

Finland has been one of the few nations which has been pushing the circular economy (CE) agenda for a few years now and is the first country to have a well-defined CE roadmap. If one reads the Finnish website on CE, most of the projects described resonate with a sustainability agenda. Are they the same? CE is a subset of sustainability-agenda. It is an enabler. The most important part of CE is the “E”, the modus operandi to create money (economy). CE is one of the proponents that make sustainability actions profitable. When there is profit to be made, it gets investors and innovators inventing new methods and citizen-participation. Most people in India and South East Asia do not throw paper and plastics away. There are well-established businesses which come to your door to collect your broken plastics and read newspapers.

For example, Figure 1 shows the value chain of metal over its life. The grey line shows the current trend where after some use the metal wears out, goes out of track and loses value. The red continuation track shows what is possible with more traceability. The gap between these two curves is the “E” of CE!

CE is not about pleading with the government and private funding agencies to give grants and donations or pleading with citizens to be mindful. It is about showing the profit part of sustainable living; prosperity is a byproduct!

Figure 1: Valuation of metal over its life (Ref: Report titled “Identifying innovation niches using agreed visions of sustainable development” by Raul Carlsson)

The tale of two times!

When we talk about CE, we need to think about two types of initiatives. One set of initiatives would be aiming at fostering new ways of economy and design which will make products more and more circular. The other set of initiatives will need to focus on how to make existing materials and products more circular and how to bring them into the framework of new CE-oriented economic models.

These two efforts can be very different in their modus-operandi. For example, innovating circular material is a major initiative. But, we also need to make sure that we have the market to foster recycling of the material already in circulation. A more focussed example is a work done by RISE in Sweden where the team investigated the embedding of sensing modules in metal-casts to enhance traceability. This will not work for engine-parts already in circulation. So new ways (like image and sound signature analysis) need to be investigated.

“Information” to the rescue!

We have discussed that CE needs to give economic value to circular initiatives. This, of course, needs economic theories that give CE sense. An important role will also be played by material scientists who will be inventing materials which can have a circular life-cycle. Many times, CE initiatives are described under three broad categories (these are by no means exhaustive).

1. Recyclability: How easy is the material to recycle? Do we have the right infrastructure to recycle it many times?
2. Endurability: How long does the material and product last? The product itself may not last for too long. However, as long as its sub-parts last long it enables a service-based circular economic model where companies take ownership of different sub-parts of a product.
3. Utilization: How well is a product utilized? Shared-ownership is a much-investigated mode of ownership that can enhance circularity.

At some point, all these initiatives need “information”. Information that needs to be collected and that needs to be used. Following the classic DIKW paradigm information comes from data and data is collected using sensors. Extracting information from data and generating actionable-intelligence from it is one of the major use of the current wave of artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives. Hence, sensors and AI (SensAI) will be a major player in enabling and enhancing the economic value of CE goals.

How can SensAI help?

Let us discuss a few examples of how SensAI can help CE. It can be noted here that this, by no means, is an exhaustive list.

Recyclability: To make materials and products recyclable, we need innovations that help us design the right product made from the right kinds of materials and made using the right modular design. AI can be used in material discovery. It can also help us in designing the right modular approach. For example, in designing a car it will help a lot to make sure that the components in each sub-system have similar circular value. Then the whole sub-system can be recycled as a unit. However, a complicated system like a car has thousands of components. Ai based suggestion-systems can help the designer a lot. Similarly, the number of standards many products need to adhere to is large. With the CE standards in place, it will enhance innovation to have AI agents to suggest standard adherences and pitfalls.

Sensors also make the existing recycling industries smart. For example, the use of sensAI has enabled industries to invent more efficient waste sorting robots.

Endurability: Durability of a product depends on information monitoring of its parts for all its life. A stitch in time does save nine. The consumer/owner needs to know the health of the components and also needs to know the life-trajectory. She also needs to know when is the best time to repair, refurbish or resale it. Both these can be enabled by the use of sensors and AI.

Traceability is a key issue here which will need sensors and open tracking system like blockchain.

Utilization: Maximising the utilization of product or/and sub-products also needs ubiquitous use of sensors and AI. For example, instead of each farmer owning their own farming machinery, many of them can be shared between farmers and between regions. The company facilitating this may need remote monitoring of the farms to know wth growth phase of the crops. It may also need weather data to estimate the best time for different operations. It may also need to know farming information from a larger region to predict possible infestations. All these need ubiquitous use of sensors and AI. It will also need more efficient profit-sharing mechanisms which can be done by data-oriented innovations like crypto-currencies.

Retelling the short story in 2030!

The radiator of my second-hand car gives me a warning signal that it will need a repair which will cost $50. Then while I am on a hiking trip it suggests a mechanic in the town where I plan to park my car. I get the job done. After this, my car does a full re-evaluation of itself and suggests me to lease my engine to a startup which will then assure that my engine is always in the perfect shape. It also gives me an estimate of how much I can get if I sell my car then or after 1 year or two years. My car never depreciates in value. In fact, I can hardly call it “my car” as I lease out most of the parts to various SMEs. I can call it my “transport solution”!