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Team Status Report for 3/6

This week, we had a meeting with our professor and a separate one with our TA to go over some of the design features of our project to ensure that we are prepared for the design review presentations coming up next week. We discussed how we can provide greater detail to our system’s block diagram to better show how our sensor array will be interfacing with the Jetson Nano. We also narrowed down the design of the of the sliding mechanism, and discussed how our sensors would interact with our image classifier.

As of now, our biggest risks still seem to be meeting our desired overall latency and ensuring that our sensor array is able to pick up meaningful readings from objects placed in our bin.  Concerning the latency issue, we have narrowed down our mechanism design preference to two options: 1) using a gear attached to the platform to move it and 2) using a belt system to slide the platform. We are looking for more feedback on which may be quicker and more reliable to help improve our latency and reliability. As for the sensors, we are planning to purchase multiple of the same sensors and spread them out under the platform so that a greater area is covered by the sensors to hopefully get more accurate readings. We will begin the testing of our sensors shortly so we will have a much better idea of exactly where each sensor should be placed in the next few weeks.

One change to our design that we made recently was that we eventually plan on buying more of the same sensors and spreading them out across the holding platform. While this will increase our costs slightly, none of our sensors are extremely expensive and we feel that the potential added accuracy of having a more spread out sensor array is worth the extra cost.

Our project is behind. We have received our first round of sensors in the mail and will begin testing shortly. Our mechanism still hasn’t been finalized. Next week, we will have our design review presentation and will hopefully be able to order some more components to our project as well, after we finalize the mechanism.

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Tate’s Status Report for 3/6

This week, I have been helping my team with our design review presentation slides for our presentation next week. I will be presenting for my team, so I have also been preparing for that as well.  Additionally, I put the first round of order requests in for our sensors so that we can begin testing when those come in as well. I have been trying to look into which sliding mechanism design will be best for our bin, but honestly did not allocate enough time to work on the project this week and to finalize whether a belt system or gear system would be quicker and more reliable due to other conflicts.

My progress is behind schedule because as of Saturday, I was not able to finalize the mechanism design. While my team has narrowed it down to two possible designs, I haven’t been able to fully confirm the better approach. This may require some peer feedback, testing, and more research to determine. I do feel that my team’s design presentation will be ready on time.

In the next week, I hope to decide which mechanism is best, retrieve our ordered sensors so that we can start testing them on different objects to see what are the best ways to incorporate the sensors into our classifiers, and layout a draft for our design report.

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Tate’s Status Report for 2/27

This week, I helped my team finalize our project proposal presentation slides for our presentation which occurred on Monday. After our presentation and having received some feedback, I did some more research on sensors that we could add to our design. I also worked with my team to develop a more appropriate accuracy rate for our recyclable items. Most recently, I put in our first order requests for some sensors so that we can begin testing them as soon as possible.

My progress is on schedule as I ordered our first round of sensors so that we can begin testing them soon, which is on track with our overall plan.

In the next week, I hope to begin work on testing the sensors I ordered so that I can help my team better gauge the type of input we will need from the sensors in order to successfully be able to classify waste items. With this information, I hope to have a better idea of how we will position the sensors within our smart trash bin.

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Tate’s Status Report for 2/20/21

This week, I worked with my team, our professor, and our TA to narrow down the scope of our project and to clarify some design choices for our product. Having decided to incorporate more sensors into our trash bin in order to better classify items of waste, I did some research on what types of additional sensors would be best for identifying various materials. Researched sensors (such as inductive and capacitive sensors) and their functionality were added to a shared Google Doc with the rest of my team. I also helped my team clarify and modify our target audience (CMU campus trash bin), purpose (increase recycling rate and decrease contamination rate), and functionality (automatically separates recyclables from trash one item at a time). Another accomplishment this week was making significant headway on the Project Proposal Slides, which contain the most up-to-date specifics on the project. I have attached the Google Doc that my team and I have been brainstorming on here: Proposal Draft.

I feel that our progress is now on schedule. I was a little worried that we were behind in the middle of the week as my team had to meet with our professor and TA in order to straighten some project ideas out. Specifically, we narrowed down the types of recyclables that we would be classifying to 3 main categories and we decided to add more sensors than just a camera to our trash bin. I believe that we were able to resolve these issues quickly and that we are on track to finish up our Project Proposal Slides by the end of the week.

In the next week, I am really focused on making sure that my team’s Project Proposal slides are complete and submitted by the end of the weekend. I then plan to help my team prepare for our proposal presentations which are taking place next week.  I want to ensure that we have a clear and complete presentation that has been thoroughly thought out. I am looking forward to sharing our project idea with everyone.