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Lauren’s Status Report for 3/6

This week I made most of the design presentation slides, and added more details about how the image classifier will work with the sensor classifier to produce the final classification output of recyclable vs. non-recyclable. For a few hours on Saturday, I met with only Jessica (Tate said he was busy, so he did the Team Status Report instead) to come up with how many sensors of each type (inductive, capacitive, etc.) were needed, and how many GPIO pins we would use for each kind of sensor. Jessica and I finalized the placement / position of each type of sensor on the sorting platform (based on sensing ranges, our budget, and the assumption for the minimum object size our trash can will detect). I also added more images for some of the slides for the presentation, based on the feedback the group received from the previous presentation that some of the slides were too empty.

My progress is behind; the mechanism hasn’t been finalized. This week, Jessica asked Tate to finalize certain parts of the mechanism, so we could have it ready for the design presentation, but that hasn’t happened. Tate has been busy, so he hasn’t been able to meet with us or contribute much outside of class. Jessica and I work on the slides during the meetings he misses (typically we update him through text or a later meeting, if he’s available – this week we updated him on the sensor placement we came up with and the number of GPIO pins needed for each sensor; this was necessary because he’ll be presenting next week).

I hope to finalize the other components needed (including the mechanism) for the project, so the team can start buying more parts. I also want to test the sensors that we received.

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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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Lauren’s Status Report for 2/27

  • What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

This week I presented the proposal presentation. Based on the feedback we got after the presentation, I helped refine our requirements for accuracy and latency to better reflect our goal for the project. Previously, we had more a minimum for these statistics rather than a maximum, so changing them was necessary.

  • Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?

My progress is on schedule.

  • What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

I hope to finalize the components needed (including the mechanism) for the project, so the team can start buying more parts. I also want to start testing various objects with the sensors ordered to determine whether they will work for the project.

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Jessica’s Status Report for 2/27

This week, I mainly researched different sensors so that we could submit our first purchase request by the end of this week. I tried to find sensors with a decent sensing range that fit within our budget, but most sensors have around an 8mm range. From the sensors that I researched, we ended up purchasing an inductive, capacitive, and load sensor. My group also met with our TA to further discuss our mechanism and our requirements. After our discussion, we decided to tighten the requirements to 90% classification accuracy and 1-2 second latency.

Our project is still on-schedule. Next week, I plan to finalize our mechanism, order the mechanism parts, and prepare for our design presentation.

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Team Status Report for 2/27

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.

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Jessica’s Status Report for 2/20

This week, I helped to narrow down the scope of our project and further develop our project. Specifically, I researched  potential sensors that we could use in the case that our classifier was not accurate enough. We ended up choosing an IR and inductive sensor that were mentioned in a garbage segregation research paper that I had found. I also helped to finalize our mechanism and modify our proposal presentation slides due this weekend .

Our project is still on-schedule. During the week, we had to schedule extra meetings with our professor and TA to address some problems with our idea, but we have now resolved all of those issues.

Next week, I plan to start the design process including finalizing budget, making preliminary sketches of the mechanism, and beginning to prepare for our design presentation in two weeks.

 

Some resources for sensors:

https://lillych.in/files/Chin-2019-icra.pdf

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1007/1/012057/pdf

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Lauren’s Status Report for 2/20

 

  • What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

I helped finalize the categories that would be determined in classification, and narrowed the scope of some of the objects considered recyclable (like only considering plastic bottles as recyclable vs. all other plastics). I also researched additional sensors for plastic and glass detection because I figured out capacitive sensors may not have a large enough sensing range to work for our project. In particular, I found that light sensors will work best to detect transparent materials like glass. Jessica and I finalized the mechanism (sliding box) that the items will be moved with, and we also finished most of the slides for the proposal.

  • Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?

My progress is on schedule.

  • What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

I hope to present the proposal slides, and get started on the design presentation afterwards.