Sustainability and high prices of new smartphones have increased the demand for used devices. rebuy, a Berlin-based company that buys, evaluates and sells used smartphones, game consoles, wearables and cameras, is taking advantage of this trend. Rebuy is using automation more and more to process the used devices through their Collaborative Robots, or “Cobots” by making it an essential part of their automation..

With their Cobots, Rebuy can test up to 12,000 smartphones every month in their factory near Berlin. They aim to finish the processing of a device from arrival to final inspection in less than a day. Dirk Schuhmann, the manager of Rebuy in Falkensee, explains that they “can currently process 500 devices per day with one Cobot and three test devices. We plan to add a fourth device, which will increase our capacity to approximately 600 to 650 devices per day. Cobots work consistently well and accurately and simply don’t need breaks. This could never be achieved by human labor. Moreover, this type of work is very monotonous. So a win-win”.

Undeniably, the hardest part of the whole process is grading. Rebuy ultimately uses Artificial Intelligence to inspect the cosmetics of the devices, as it gives objective and consistent evaluations, something that the human eye and subjectivity can’t achieve.