Collaborative sorting: integrating pneumatic separation and manipulator techniques for efficient coal gangue sorting.

Coal is one of the important sources to meet the global energy demand. The intelligent treatment of coal gangue is of great significance to environmental protection and resource recycling. In the treatment of gangue, the use of manipulator sorting alone faces the challenge of being difficult to adapt to the increasing sorting intensity and high cost of use. In this study, we propose a hybrid sorting system that combines pneumatic separation and manipulator sorting to address the limitations of pneumatic separation sorting and manipulator. We design a task assignment algorithm based on genetic algorithms to realize their collaborative work for optimal overall sorting efficiency in a sequence of gangue. Experimental results demonstrate that the collaborative sorting system, incorporating both manipulator and high-pressure pneumatic separation, outperforms the single pneumatic separation sorting system with an average increase in sorting efficiency of 20.66%. Furthermore, the collaborative system increased sorting efficiency by up to 76.09% compared to single manipulator sorting. These findings validate the effectiveness of our proposed approach in achieving efficient sorting of coal gangue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]