Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
19 Ready-to-Serve Trash Bin
Dongming Liu
Josh Litao
Owen Xu
Jason Zhang design_document1.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
photo1.png
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photo3.jpg
presentation1.pdf
proposal1.pdf
proposal2.pdf
video
# Title
Ready-to-Serve Trash Bin

# Team Member

- Owen Xu (jinyuxu2)
- Dongming Liu (dl35)
- Josh Litao (jlitao2)

# Problem
One of the biggest challenges people will face after their surgery is immobility. During the hospitalized recovery period, many issues will arise including how they can throw their trash. Clearly it’s not possible to let the patients stack all the trash on the bed, so the easiest solution is to have a trash bin next to their bed. However, existing trash bins have various problems. Open-lid ones will spread bad odor across the room; and those with the lid are hard to use for patients, patients have to step on the foot pedal or use the other hand to trigger the sensor, both are hard for patients recovering on the bed. Moreover, having a trash bin next to each bed in hospitals may increase the labor force needed to clean these bins.


# Solution
We propose a smart trash bin that would distinguish a human's hand gesture of throwing trash. The bin will serve as a “taxi” in the hospitals. Once the cameras, which are installed in the hospitals, detect that someone did a hand gesture of throwing trash, the bin, with wheels attached to its bottom, will receive this signal, move towards that person and automatically open the lid. With this smart trash bin, instead of placing various bins in different places, everything needed is to wave hands and wait for a couple seconds, then our smart trash bin will come to serve. The bin would also be useful for people with immobility problems at home, like those who are in wheelchairs or recovering on bed at home after small surgery.


# Questions & Answers:
- Q1. If the bin detects a person is about to throw trash, will the time be enough for the bin to open the lid to hold trash thrown by the person?
- A1: Using this bin is like hailing a taxi. If people need to throw trash, they can just wave their hands. Once the camera detects this gesture, the trash bin will come to that person who waves the hand. The person will then throw the trash into the bin. During the process, there’s no need for people to hold their trash all the time. The bin will be closed when it is traveling, and open once it reaches the target position. The target position should be somewhere around that person, instead of the exact position of him/her. As otherwise the bin will just hit on that person


- Q2. Is it possible that people are not intended to throw trash but their movement is incorrectly recognized by the camera for saying that they want? And why don't just replace this part by phone app, or a button?
- A2. The hand gesture of hailing a taxi, aka calling the trash bin to serve, is relatively unique, which means people seldom do the same gesture in daily normal life. So, the camera should not mistakenly recognize someone who does not want to throw trash as he/she does. Meanwhile, using hand gestures is more convenient when considering some old people do not know how to use smart phones. Button will have the similar problem to the traditional trash bins. Patients have to reach to the button first before they can throw their trash, which sometimes could be difficult to do.

- Q3. When the bin is traveling, is it possible that the odor of trash can get spread across the room? Or is the bin sealed?
- A3. In our design, the moving trash bin is relatively small, the sum of three dimensions will be smaller than 45 inches. It will mainly be responsible for collecting residual waste, and some small amount of food waste. Since food waste is usually responsible for bad odor, having little of these in the trash bin will not be an issue, and spreading bad smell across the room by the bin is a case that would barely happen. Meanwhile, people with immobility usually need help from others, either family members or nurses or hospital orderly, to get their meal prepared, who can also take care of the food waste from each meal. Thus, we don’t have to worry much about the problem of producing large amounts of food waste.

- Q4. What if the bin is serving someone and at the same time someone else needs to throw trash?
- A4. A queue will be recorded for who requests to be served by the trash bin, and the bin will follow the first-raise_hand-first-serve rule.


# Solution Components:
## Container:
The purpose of it is to store trash. It needs to have a lid to contain the odor.
### Parts:
A Indoor trash bin [link1](https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Basics-Compact-Bathroom-Plastic/dp/B09Z776HYJ/ref=sr_1_7_ffob_sspa?crid=GW1WVZRZ7N7D&keywords=plastic%2Btrash%2Bbin&qid=1706151356&sprefix=plastic%2Btrashbin%2Caps%2C103&sr=8-7-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9tdGY&th=1), [link2](https://www.amazon.com/Superio-Plastic-Bedroom-Bathroom-Kitchen/dp/B08YRZ98KY/ref=sr_1_9?crid=2CGATST9J1PZW&keywords=plastic%2Btrash%2Bbin%2Bwith%2Blid%2Band%2Bpedal&qid=1706151417&sprefix=plastic%2Btrash%2Bbin%2Bwith%2Blid%2Band%2Bpadel%2Caps%2C117&sr=8-9&th=1), or similar items.

## Trash Bin Movement:
The trash bin needs to reach the user based on the commands coming from the detection system.

### Parts:
- a pair of DC motors (model: TBD with mechanical shop to see which type of motor fits better).
- a pair of caster wheels. For supporting and balancing the trash bin. [Link](https://www.amazon.com/Furniture-Plastic-Casters-Kitchen-Stainless/dp/B09Q37G919/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?keywords=small%2Bcasters%2Bwheels&qid=1706152011&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1)

The control circuit of the motors will be part of the PCB.

## Trash Bin Lid Control:
The trash bin needs to open when it is necessary (i.e. when the user needs to put the trash in the bin) and remain closed for the rest of the time. This can be done using a servo motor. In addition, the lid can only open outward.

### Parts:
- a servo motor (model: TBD with mechanical shop to see which type of motor fits better)
Note: probably this one [Link](https://www.amazon.com/Smraza-Digital-Steering-Waterproof-Control/dp/B0886H91DY?ref_=ast_sto_dp)

The control circuit of the servo motor will be part of the PCB.

### MCU:
ESP32-S3 has WiFi and Bluetooth integration, so it is better for receiving commands from the detection system. The MCU is also in charge of controlling the trash bin movement and the lid movement. It is a part of the PCB.

Potential MCU model: ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 [link](https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs) (S3 series)

## Motion and Object Detection:
Motion and object detection will be implemented using computer vision and some open-source models. They will be deployed to a microcomputer (single-board computer). The camera captures the image or video stream for motion and object detection. When the person does a specific gesture, it commands the trash bin to move to the person. When the trash bin is closed enough, it commands the trash bin to open the lid. After collecting the trash, the trash bin will navigate back to its original position based on the commands.

### Parts:
- Raspberry-Pi-4 with 2GB or 4GB [Link](https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/r/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-4-model-b)
- Raspberry-Pi camera module [Link](https://www.amazon.com/Smraza-Raspberry-Megapixels-Adjustable-Fish-Eye/dp/B07L2SY756)

Note: if the computation is not good enough, we will use Nvidia Jetson.

## Power:
Trash bin movement and trash bin lid control will be powered by a lithium battery, and motion and object detection is powered by a wall-plugged power supply, given that the subsystem for motion and object detection is stationary.

### Parts:
- Lithium battery: TBD
- Wall-plugged power supply: [Link](https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Supply-iUniker-Switch-Listed/dp/B097P2NLVH/ref=sr_1_3?adgrpid=1330409638929056&hvadid=83150817070992&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=95058&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvtargid=kwd-83150957904950%3Aloc-190&hydadcr=24365_13514965&keywords=raspberry+pi+4b+power+supply&qid=1706150750&sr=8-3)

# Criteria For Success:
1. Be able to recognize people’s hand wave gestures for throwing trash.
2. Travel to people who need to throw trash. The lid of the bin should remain closed until it reaches that person.
3. The target position should be close to the person but not the exact position.
4. Follow the first-wave-hand-first-serve rule.
5. Be able to receive control command from the motion and object detection system


Assistive Chessboard

Robert Kaufman, Rushi Patel, William Sun

Assistive Chessboard

Featured Project

Problem: It can be difficult for a new player to learn chess, especially if they have no one to play with. They would have to resort to online guides which can be distracting when playing with a real board. If they have no one to play with, they would again have to resort to online games which just don't have the same feel as real boards.

Proposal: We plan to create an assistive chess board. The board will have the following features:

-The board will be able to suggest a move by lighting up the square of the move-to space and square under the piece to move.

-The board will light up valid moves when a piece is picked up and flash the placed square if it is invalid.

-We will include a chess clock for timed play with stop buttons for players to signal the end of their turn.

-The player(s) will be able to select different standard time set-ups and preferences for the help displayed by the board.

Implementation Details: The board lights will be an RGB LED under each square of the board. Each chess piece will have a magnetic base which can be detected by a magnetic field sensor under each square. Each piece will have a different strength magnet inside it to ID which piece is what (ie. 6 different magnet sizes for the 6 different types of pieces). Black and white pieces will be distinguished by the polarity of the magnets. The strength and polarity will be read by the same magnetic field sensor under each square. The lights will have different colors for the different piece that it is representing as well as for different signals (ie. An invalid move will flash red).

The chess clock will consist of a 7-segment display in the form of (h:mm:ss) and there will be 2 stop buttons, one for each side, to signal when a player’s turn is over. A third button will be featured near the clock to act as a reset button. The combination of the two stop switches and reset button will be used to select the time mode for the clock. Each side of the board will also have a two toggle-able buttons or switches to control whether move help or suggested moves should be enabled on that side of the board. The state of the decision will be shown by a lit or unlit LED light near the relevant switch.

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