The goal is to build a robot which can detect waste materials like plastic bottles, wrappers, papers, polythene, polythene packets and dispose them to a dustbin. The robot will have self-navigation capabilities and it can detect waste materials using robotic vision.
This project won the first prize in Intra-IUB robotics competition 2016 [Details here]
The main objectives to fulfill our goal are:
- Develop a robotic vision system to detect waste materials from the surroundings autonomously
- Make the robot navigation autonomous using robotic vision and sensors
- Make a robotic hand to pick up waste materials
- Attach a small dustbin where robot can temporarily dispose waste materials to hold
- Construct the chasis robust for physical environments
The other group members were: Bayzid Ahmed Shakhar and Dilshad Hussain
This project deals a lot with computer vision. For seeing the environment, we used Go Pro Action camera. A servo motor attached with the camera can swing it upto 180o. Robot’s camera takes snapshot in each rotation. On each snapshot robot implements its detection algorithm to detect waste materials. On detection, the robot moves to the detected location and use its hand to pick up object. A bin attached to the back of the robot which is used to store the object temporarily. After picking up three objects, the robot travels automatically to the dustbin and there unload the bin attached to it. The robot does not continuously perform the task of waste materials collection and disposal. Since its power is limited, the robot works once in every hour and sweep the area. The area of the robot is be assigned prior to its start. A fixed place near the streets, in the parks and other locations is be assigned for the robot to rest there while not working and charge itself.
