Material separation system

A material separation system comprising circuitry configured to:

• acquire a composite image capturing a plurality of commingled pieces of material;
• estimate a density of the plurality of commingled pieces of material based on the composite image;
• set a number of candidate separation positions based on the composite image;
• identify, for each of the candidate separation positions, a subset of the plurality of commingled pieces of material;
• calculate an estimated mass of each subset of the plurality of commingled pieces of material, based on the density and a volume of the subset;
• determine a position for separating a predetermined mass of pieces of material from the plurality of commingled pieces of material, as a separation position, based on a comparison of the predetermined mass with the estimated mass corresponding to each of the candidate separation positions;
• and
• separate the predetermined mass of pieces of material from the plurality of commingled pieces of material at the separation position.

A method of material separation, the method comprising:

• acquiring a composite image capturing a plurality of commingled pieces of material;
• setting a plurality of voxels for the plurality of commingled pieces of material captured in the composite image;
• estimating, for each of the plurality of voxels, a mass of the pieces of material corresponding to the voxel, as a voxel mass;
• setting a number of candidate separation positions based on the composite image;
• identifying, for each of the candidate separation positions, a subset of the plurality of commingled pieces of material;
• calculating an estimated mass of each subset of the plurality of commingled pieces of material, based on the voxel mass of each of the plurality of voxels;
• determining a position for separating a predetermined mass of pieces of material from the plurality of commingled pieces of material, as a separation position, based on a comparison of the predetermined mass with the estimated mass corresponding to each of the candidate separation positions;
• and
• separating the predetermined mass of pieces of material from the plurality of commingled pieces of material at the separation position.