Invitation
November Update
From Sub Hub working on Ai Project
From a series of workshops and discussions in the Toy & Play Sustainability Research Hub, an area of interest has emerged around developing a collaborative system for recognising recalled toys from images. The initial research focuses on using world models (Genie by Google) for visual analysis and exploring how a service could match toys to public recall databases to flag items with identified safety issues.
Vicki Thomas, leading collaborative research at the Toy Hub, recently invited Charles Barlow from Cloop (https://clt.ltd) — a London-based AI startup — and Eva Pascoe (https://www.evapascoe.com/) , a leader in e-commerce innovation, to explore current tools and technologies that could support toy recognition and circularity.
The intention is to build an open, collaborative foundation that other stakeholders will see value and contribute to. By working with publicly available data sources from the EU and beyond, the team can demonstrate technical feasibility without requiring formal data-sharing agreements at this stage. The approach is designed to scale easily as interest and participation grow.
This work represents an early step towards digital product passports for toys, while also demonstrating to policymakers that industry participants are actively engaging in responsible innovation. Future functions are envisioned to provide potential to help facilitate more effective circular practices for toys through product specific guidance to consumers regarding recycling, reuse and repair.
Cloop’s team have deployed a web-based demo platform — https://rycycl.com — for stakeholders to experiment with and assess the accuracy of these world models. This prototype is not intended as a consumer product but serves as a transparent test environment to guide future development. NB Please do not attempt to teach the demo by loading bulk sets of images, it is there to show what is possible and you are wasteing time and we may have to take it down.
All collected data from https://rycycl.com is anonymised and will be shared via a dashboard to promote transparency.
For more information or to get involved, please express interest contact:
Image Credit
Photograph takenby Vicki Thomas at Beckton, London.