Team Status Report for 02 | 17 | 2024

The most significant risk right now is the usage of tiny Yolo V7. According to MATOM Ai, although tiny Yolo model processes faster and lightweight, it is less accurate than Yolo V7 (MATOM Ai, 2022). This means it can give us more false positives, which is  a critical component to consider, as we cannot identify a non-garbage element (humans or animals) as a trash item and pick it up accidentally, vice versa. Therefore, we aim to mitigate this risk by using tiny Yolo V7 to run inferences and Yolo V7 to verify their accuracy to prevent false positives. This method will enhance the efficiency of our detection system, providing reliable information.

Another risk we’d like to address is the pick up mechanism. We chose to use a rotor combined with a conveyor belt. Since it has only been implemented in water, we are concerned about some unforeseen problems that might arise when the robot is operated on ground. To mitigate this risk, we have researched different types of issues we might run into and talked with our TA to see if our idea would be technically feasible. The feedback included adding a ramp to avoid items falling in between the conveyor belt and the robot. We have given ourselves slack time to address any unforseen bugs/ hardware issues; however, we do have the roller (with 6-7 caster wheels) mechanism as a back-up plan. Since we did a lot of research on roller mechanism, it would not be too time consuming to build it from scratch.

There were some changes in our existing design of the system. First, we added speed as a requirement since time plays a vital role in battery life and efficiency of the garbage cleaning robot system. In real life, it would be inefficient if the robot takes more time picking up the trash items than existing human workers and our solution would not be appealing to our customers (local governments). Our new design uses a rotor to bring in trash components and a conveyor belt to pull the trash up to the storage compartment. This design has greater complexity and has more components (a slight increase in cost associated with the project); however, the entire cost is still within our budget, and we decided to allocate more out of class time to implement the rotor and conveyor belt to be in line with our original plans.

As we are on schedule, there has not been any significant changes to our plans on the Gantt Chart.

Now, we would like to address how our solution will meet the following needs:

Public Health, Safety, and Welfare

We considered public health, safety, and welfare in detail when defining our design and scope. Considerations of public health, sanitation, and pollution that results from street-garbage/ trash  were our main sources of intention and drive behind the product. The end goal of the robot is to increase public health and welfare by collecting street trash and in the process, inform the public about the the importance of maintaining clean streets. This was mentioned in the Design review presentation and will be discussed during the presentation as well.

In terms of public safety, we considered this in great detail while finalizing our design. After we completed major portions of research for the robot, we finalized on two designs: a roller mechanism that consists of 6-7 Caster wheels and a rotating fan that works in combination with a small conveyor belt. We chose to use the conveyor belt + rotating fan as our main pick-up mechanism for the robot. The main reason for this design decision was that it provides greater safety for stray animals, pets, or small children that might accidentally put their hands into the robot. Although this will be significantly advised against, this is a potential scenario we must be aware of. The roller with the Caster wheels poses a significant threat to stray animals/ small children as there is no in-expensive way for the wheels to stop immediately when in contact with skin/ fur.  The wheels also squish/ squeeze the trash component as they pull it into the storage area; hence, it presents a danger to any stray animals/ small children. The rotating fan will not move as fast as the wheels and runs on a DC motor, hence it will mostly get stuck (if a stray animal runs into it).

Social Factors

The product will:

• not exclude certain groups of people when active for tasks as it aims to positively impact the entire society without biases.
• benefit governments as they can exhibit their continuous contribution to technology and innovation to the residents since the robot will be seen very often on the street by the general public.
• help environment organizations resolve some of their existing issues such as reducing wastes while minimizing costs for cleaning with our cost-effective autonomous garbage cleaning robot,
• work across all cultures as it can adapt to different cultural elements with the addition/removal of features and settings by preferences.
• align with the existing sustainability policies set by governments

Economic Factors

In regards to production, our product aims to have low enough cost to be useful to state/local governments. Specifically, the product is meant to last for a long time and be relatively self-sufficient, with a one time cost per purchase rather than a salary based cost necessary for humans. However, since each robot can only cover so much land in a couple hours, the consumers must buy several.

In terms of distributions, none of our components are involved in a supply chain shortage, so mass production would not be an issue. It may take some effort to release the robots into the street however, such as some initial setup cost to know which area to focus on.

In terms of when these products should be produced, this product is useful year round but is not meant to run in inclement weather. Therefore, we anticipate the robot to have more usage in the summer, and thus believe the supply of robots should be higher in the summer season.

A was written by Hirani, B was written by Ella, and C was written by Ritu.