Ahmed J. Afifi

Elias Arbash, Ahmed Jamal Afifi, Ymane Belahsen et al.

The global challenge of sustainable recycling demands automated, fast, and accurate, state-of-the-art (SOTA) material detection systems that act as a bedrock for a circular economy. Democratizing access to these cutting-edge solutions that enable real-time waste analysis is essential for scaling up recycling efforts and fostering the Green Deal. In response, we introduce \textbf{Electrolyzers-HSI}, a novel multimodal benchmark dataset designed to accelerate the recovery of critical raw materials through accurate electrolyzer materials classification. The dataset comprises 55 co-registered high-resolution RGB images and hyperspectral imaging (HSI) data cubes spanning the 400--2500 nm spectral range, yielding over 4.2 million pixel vectors and 424,169 labeled ones. This enables non-invasive spectral analysis of shredded electrolyzer samples, supporting quantitative and qualitative material classification and spectral properties investigation. We evaluate a suite of baseline machine learning (ML) methods alongside SOTA transformer-based deep learning (DL) architectures, including Vision Transformer, SpectralFormer, and the Multimodal Fusion Transformer, to investigate architectural bottlenecks for further efficiency optimisation when deploying transformers in material identification. We implement zero-shot detection techniques and majority voting across pixel-level predictions to establish object-level classification robustness. In adherence to the FAIR data principles, the electrolyzers-HSI dataset and accompanying codebase are openly available at https://github.com/hifexplo/Electrolyzers-HSI and https://rodare.hzdr.de/record/3668, supporting reproducible research and facilitating the broader adoption of smart and sustainable e-waste recycling solutions.

Ahmed J. Afifi, Samuel T. Thiele, Aldino Rizaldy et al.

The increasing use of deep learning techniques has reduced interpretation time and, ideally, reduced interpreter bias by automatically deriving geological maps from digital outcrop models. However, accurate validation of these automated mapping approaches is a significant challenge due to the subjective nature of geological mapping and the difficulty in collecting quantitative validation data. Additionally, many state-of-the-art deep learning methods are limited to 2D image data, which is insufficient for 3D digital outcrops, such as hyperclouds. To address these challenges, we present Tinto, a multi-sensor benchmark digital outcrop dataset designed to facilitate the development and validation of deep learning approaches for geological mapping, especially for non-structured 3D data like point clouds. Tinto comprises two complementary sets: 1) a real digital outcrop model from Corta Atalaya (Spain), with spectral attributes and ground-truth data, and 2) a synthetic twin that uses latent features in the original datasets to reconstruct realistic spectral data (including sensor noise and processing artifacts) from the ground-truth. The point cloud is dense and contains 3,242,964 labeled points. We used these datasets to explore the abilities of different deep learning approaches for automated geological mapping. By making Tinto publicly available, we hope to foster the development and adaptation of new deep learning tools for 3D applications in Earth sciences. The dataset can be accessed through this link: https://doi.org/10.14278/rodare.2256.