Category: Tate’s Status Reports

This week, because our project is essentially finished and fully integrated/working, I worked on our final video with the rest of my team. Specifically, I recorded videos of us demoing our entire system as well as various clips of the mechanism moving and the sensor array working. I also have begun my voice-over recordings which will be overlaid with our final edited video as I am responsible for speaking in the final video. Here is a folder with all the clips I gathered with my team this week: Final Demo Videos.

I am on track as we are wrapping up the semester and our project is fully integrated and working.

In the next week, I plan on finishing up my voice recordings for our final video so it can be submitted by Monday night. I also will be working on our final report so that we can submit that by the deadline as well.

This week, I collected and recorded a lot of data on the accuracy of our recycling system. Specifically, I collected data on the accuracy of the sensor classifier, the image classifier, and the overall classifier. I conducted 100 trials per material for our overall classifier for various different items of the same material classification. So, 100 trials were conducted for each material category which includes PET plastic, HDPE plastic, metal, glass, paper, cardboard, and trash. In addition, for the individual testing of the sensor and image classifiers, I conducted 50 trials per material category for both classifiers separately. Here I have attached the full data sheet with all of the recorded accuracy numbers: Data. I also recorded the accuracy of our ResNet model per epoch during its training and graphed the results here.

My progress is on track.

In the next week, I hope to continue to improve our overall accuracy with the rest of my team and help Jessica prepare for our Final Presentation next week. I also plan to work with my team to start making videos of our functioning system for our video demo coming up.

This week, I captured a lot of pictures of different types of trash and recyclables with our camera mounted in our bin. For each individual item, I took many pictures from many different angles and orientations. I estimate that I probably captured 15-20 pictures per item. These pictures will hopefully help increase the accuracy of our image classifier by providing pictures that directly represent the environment the camera will be seeing when items are thrown into the bin. Our accuracy for the image classifier was pretty low given the existing data set we were using, so adding these pictures in our environment will hopefully help quite a bit. Here is a folder of all the images our image classifier will be using, which includes the pre-existing images and the ones I took: Images.

My progress is on schedule as every system has been integrated.

In the next week, I hope to create a data sheet for my team to record accuracy data of our subsystems and entire system. I plan to work with my team this week to begin collecting data on how accurate our system is by running the system a bunch of times on different items and recording whether the outcome was successful or not.

This week I finished building the entire exterior shell of our project. I had to make some adjustments to the size of the box and thus had to rebuild portions of the bin. These adjustments were made to accommodate the necessary height needed for our camera to see the entire sensor platform and for our mechanism to properly fit with enough space. Part of completing the exterior involved cutting out a 10×10 inch hole in the top and attaching a lid to hinges for the user to open and close the bin. I mounted a contact switch that closes when the lid is shut which will be used to communicate with our Jetson to begin classification. I also mounted the sliding mechanism to the box and began testing it with Jessica. Our initial tests showed we were able to get a “round-trip” speed of roughly 1.4 seconds. We hope to improve on this as much we can. I also attached the sliding box to the sliding mechanism, which will allow for the items of waste to be pushed into the correct bin. For ease of working with and adjusting our sensors and mechanism, I have not attached the side walls to the bin yet and probably will not until the final demo.

My progress is on track as all the necessary components (mechanism, sliding box, etc.) have been attached to the exterior shell. The box is finished and I will continue to make small adjustments as needed.

In the next week, I plan to work with my group on creating a presentation for our interim demo. I will also be helping my group integrate and adjust the sensors to the exterior, and will do more tests on the mechanism speed.

This week I spent the majority of my time working on building the exterior shell for our project. I ordered and picked up wood from Home Depot and had the wood cut to the specific sizes needed to build the exterior. I spent a few days this week in the Techspark wood shop putting together the pieces of our exterior. I also used the laser cutter to cut out smaller pieces of wood needed for the box. I adjusted some of the designs for the mechanism as well because Jessica and I found out that we will need a little more room within the box to be  able to properly house our mechanism. I also used Jessica’s Solidworks models of 2 mechanism components and had those 3D printed to be able to fit our bigger gear. Putting together the box has been a bit more challenging than expected because I want to be sure that we are able to put our sensor platform in the box and wire everything without too much difficulty.

I am mostly on track as long as I am able to finish putting the entire exterior together this week and integrate the sensor platform into the shell.

In the next week, I will be finishing up the exterior and making adjustments as needed so that our box can properly fit our mechanism as intended. I will be working with Jessica and Lauren to integrate the entire system as well.

This week I helped my team test the current and voltage outputs of our inductive and capacitance sensors wired together to ensure that our Jetson’s GPIO pins can handle the amount of sensors we are planning to wire together. I ordered some more items for our project as well, such as the proper gear size for our sliding mechanism, a flex cable for our camera, and individual trash bins which will be placed inside our exterior shell. I drew some schematics for our exterior shell so that I can figure out the exact dimensions of our product and so that I know how much wood to purchase to build it. I also made a CAD model of our sensor platform which has various holes cutout to fit the size of our sensors.

My progress is a little behind as I haven’t physically started building the exterior structure of our product, but I have the designs in place and I will be going over them with my team so that I can order the wood and start building the shell.

In the next week, I plan to help laser cut the sensor platform using my CAD model, purchase the wood to build the exterior shell, and start assembling the exterior shell.

This week I spent a lot of time preparing for our Design Review Presentation, which I gave on Wednesday. I also met with Jessica in the middle of the week to hash out any of our concerns on the design for the sliding mechanism. We discussed when certain parts of the mechanism would need to be purchased and then assembled as well. I am currently drawing/designing how our box will be mounted on the sliders, and I made a more detailed diagram of our sensor array with specific sensor sizes and spacing. I also met with all my team members and tested our sensors for around 3 hours on Saturday. I helped solder the ends of the inductive sensor wires to pieces of wire so that they would fit in our breadboard. I also helped with the wiring and connecting of our load sensor which my team hopes to have working this upcoming week.

Everything is on track for me except that I haven’t ordered the mechanism parts yet. Jessica and I narrowed down which parts we need to order, and decided that we don’t need to order them quite yet because we are not in a huge  hurry to assemble the slider. I do hope to order the mechanism parts though in the next week or so.

In the next week, I plan to complete my designated sections for our Design Review Report and also plan to finalize my drawing of how the box will be mounted on the sliding rails. I also plan to order the rest of our sensors and begin attaching them to the platform with my team.

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.

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.

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.