Sorting waste isn’t fun. Trash can be sticky, stinky, and sharp. The entrepreneurs at Jodone want to turn this mundane task into a human-robot collaborative game to improve efficiency and accuracy.

For Jodone’s new pilot project at the Pope/Douglas waste-to-energy facility in Alexandria, Minnesota, human operators will use its software to monitor waste as it travels along a conveyor belt. Using a touch screen, workers will swipe any recyclables they spot and then select the appropriate category: paper, plastic, tin, etc. Those instructions will be sent wirelessly to robotic arms that will grab the recyclables and drop them in the correct bin. Workers who salvage above-average amounts of recycling will receive additional income.