From last week, we changed several of our requirements to improve the use case of our product. For classification accuracy, we increased the requirement from 31% to 90% accuracy. For latency, we decreased the time from 2-3 seconds to 1-2 seconds. Both of these changes will make designing our classifier and mechanism more challenging, but they will significantly improve the user experience and overall system. With a reduced latency and increased classification accuracy, the user can place items into the trash can and sort them both reliably and quickly.
The most significant risks we are currently facing are meeting the range requirements of our sensors and reducing the overall latency. We plan to purchase multiple sensors to build a sensor array, but that method might become too expensive, depending on how much of our budget we can dedicate towards purchasing more sensors. We had also intended to embed most of the sensors underneath the platform, but after some research, that might not an option for some sensors. In terms of latency, we plan to finalize the dimensions of our project and pick out motors next week to ensure that our mechanism can meet the latency requirement. As a back-up plan, we are researching other potential mechanisms including a swiveling platform which might be able to move items faster to each bin.
Our project is still on track. This week, we presented our proposal and submitted an order request for our sensors as planned. Next week, we will finish finalizing the mechanism and continue ordering parts.