Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
66 Image Recognition Expiration Date Tracker inside of a Refrigerator
Jonathan Jacobson
Kevin Choi
Vaibhav Makar
Bonhyun Ku design_document1.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
other1.png
other2.pdf
photo1.jpg
presentation1.pdf
proposal1.pdf
Jonathan Jacobson, Kevin Choi, Vaibhav Makar

jlj3, gchoi17, vmakar2

_Problem:_ Food is wasted because it expires without the customer knowing. Current food expiration timers require the user to input every food and its expiration date manually, which is a chore few are willing to do. Also, visually impaired people may have trouble reading the expiration date on food, possibly leading to situations where food expires in the fridge or on shelves unnoticed.

_Solution Overview:_ Our project proposes to create an image scanner/speaker combination that can be put inside of a small section of a refrigerator that will scan food using computer vision, estimate the expiration date based on the type of food, and automatically create timers. The product will keep track of the food in the fridge, updating its timers when it recognizes that the food has been removed for an extended period of time (eaten/used). If the food stays in the fridge for an abnormal amount of time (past its estimated expiration), the device will alert the user when the fridge is next opened. There will also be a gas-detecting sensor that will sense certain gases related to food expiration as a failsafe in case food expires past the expected expiration date. The difference between this solution and an app-based solution is that the user does not need to interact with the device at all, it will create and remove timers based on whether the food is in the fridge or not, only alerting the user when food has expired.

_Solution Components:_

**Gas Sensor** Sensors that can detect gaseous ammonia or hydrogen peroxide would work in conjunction with the food expiration estimate to create a robust system to detect spoiled food.

**Camera** A camera connected to the onboard logic that can be used to scan food items and guess what type of food it is (eggs, milk, bread, fruit, meat, etc.) We are planning to use open-source software running on a Raspberry Pi for image recognition.

**Speaker** An external speaker connected to the onboard logic that will be used to transmit information to the consumer. This can be particularly useful to visually impaired people as it would allow for conveying information without a screen.

**Microcontroller** A microcontroller (Microchip PIC) that will be able to sense when the door of the refrigerator has been opened, and will wake up the Raspberry Pi when the door closes again. This microcontroller will also control the gas sensor, sending information to the main computer when either gaseous ammonia or hydrogen peroxide is detected.


**Onboard Computer** A Raspberry Pi that will have the open source image recognition software running on it. This is also where the scripts to start the timers and to play the audible reminders will be located. This computer will remain inactive until it receives the wake-up call from the low-power microcontroller. This also will house the bluetooth transmitter, to transmit the announcement to the user’s smartphone.

**Onboard memory** Onboard memory to store products and expiration dates. This will be stored directly on the Raspberry Pi


**Power circuit** This will power both the low-power microcontroller and the Raspberry Pi, and will be able to route power to the Raspberry Pi when told to by the microcontroller.

**Mobile Application** An app that can pair with the device using Bluetooth and has an interface to modify any incorrect or outdated information.


_Criteria for Success:_

The device should be able to withstand the temperatures in the fridge, determine the types of food and create timers based on their expected expiration dates. This device should be able to alert the user if there is expired food in the fridge and create/delete timers based on the information it receives from the camera. This device will also be outfitted with a gas sensor that can detect gasses commonly emitted by spoiled food (gaseous ammonia and hydrogen peroxide). This ‘smell’ information will supplement the timing information already available to the computer. For an advanced function, we will also create a Bluetooth link from the device to a smartphone, allowing the user's phone to also be alerted when food expires.

Dynamic Legged Robot

Joseph Byrnes, Kanyon Edvall, Ahsan Qureshi

Featured Project

We plan to create a dynamic robot with one to two legs stabilized in one or two dimensions in order to demonstrate jumping and forward/backward walking. This project will demonstrate the feasibility of inexpensive walking robots and provide the starting point for a novel quadrupedal robot. We will write a hybrid position-force task space controller for each leg. We will use a modified version of the ODrive open source motor controller to control the torque of the joints. The joints will be driven with high torque off-the-shelf brushless DC motors. We will use high precision magnetic encoders such as the AS5048A to read the angles of each joint. The inverse dynamics calculations and system controller will run on a TI F28335 processor.

We feel that this project appropriately brings together knowledge from our previous coursework as well as our extracurricular, research, and professional experiences. It allows each one of us to apply our strengths to an exciting and novel project. We plan to use the legs, software, and simulation that we develop in this class to create a fully functional quadruped in the future and release our work so that others can build off of our project. This project will be very time intensive but we are very passionate about this project and confident that we are up for the challenge.

While dynamically stable quadrupeds exist— Boston Dynamics’ Spot mini, Unitree’s Laikago, Ghost Robotics’ Vision, etc— all of these robots use custom motors and/or proprietary control algorithms which are not conducive to the increase of legged robotics development. With a well documented affordable quadruped platform we believe more engineers will be motivated and able to contribute to development of legged robotics.

More specifics detailed here:

https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece445/pace/view-topic.asp?id=30338

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