Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
19 Ready-to-Serve Trash Bin
 Dongming Liu
Josh Litao
Owen Xu
 Jason Zhang design_document1.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
photo1.png
photo2.png
photo3.jpg
presentation1.pdf
proposal1.pdf
proposal2.pdf
video
# Title
Ready-to-Serve Trash Bin

# Team Member

- Owen Xu (jinyuxu2)
- Dongming Liu (dl35)
- Josh Litao (jlitao2)

# Problem
One of the biggest challenges people will face after their surgery is immobility. During the hospitalized recovery period, many issues will arise including how they can throw their trash. Clearly it’s not possible to let the patients stack all the trash on the bed, so the easiest solution is to have a trash bin next to their bed. However, existing trash bins have various problems. Open-lid ones will spread bad odor across the room; and those with the lid are hard to use for patients, patients have to step on the foot pedal or use the other hand to trigger the sensor, both are hard for patients recovering on the bed. Moreover, having a trash bin next to each bed in hospitals may increase the labor force needed to clean these bins.


# Solution
We propose a smart trash bin that would distinguish a human's hand gesture of throwing trash. The bin will serve as a “taxi” in the hospitals. Once the cameras, which are installed in the hospitals, detect that someone did a hand gesture of throwing trash, the bin, with wheels attached to its bottom, will receive this signal, move towards that person and automatically open the lid. With this smart trash bin, instead of placing various bins in different places, everything needed is to wave hands and wait for a couple seconds, then our smart trash bin will come to serve. The bin would also be useful for people with immobility problems at home, like those who are in wheelchairs or recovering on bed at home after small surgery.


# Questions & Answers:
- Q1. If the bin detects a person is about to throw trash, will the time be enough for the bin to open the lid to hold trash thrown by the person?
- A1: Using this bin is like hailing a taxi. If people need to throw trash, they can just wave their hands. Once the camera detects this gesture, the trash bin will come to that person who waves the hand. The person will then throw the trash into the bin. During the process, there’s no need for people to hold their trash all the time. The bin will be closed when it is traveling, and open once it reaches the target position. The target position should be somewhere around that person, instead of the exact position of him/her. As otherwise the bin will just hit on that person


- Q2. Is it possible that people are not intended to throw trash but their movement is incorrectly recognized by the camera for saying that they want? And why don't just replace this part by phone app, or a button?
- A2. The hand gesture of hailing a taxi, aka calling the trash bin to serve, is relatively unique, which means people seldom do the same gesture in daily normal life. So, the camera should not mistakenly recognize someone who does not want to throw trash as he/she does. Meanwhile, using hand gestures is more convenient when considering some old people do not know how to use smart phones. Button will have the similar problem to the traditional trash bins. Patients have to reach to the button first before they can throw their trash, which sometimes could be difficult to do.

- Q3. When the bin is traveling, is it possible that the odor of trash can get spread across the room? Or is the bin sealed?
- A3. In our design, the moving trash bin is relatively small, the sum of three dimensions will be smaller than 45 inches. It will mainly be responsible for collecting residual waste, and some small amount of food waste. Since food waste is usually responsible for bad odor, having little of these in the trash bin will not be an issue, and spreading bad smell across the room by the bin is a case that would barely happen. Meanwhile, people with immobility usually need help from others, either family members or nurses or hospital orderly, to get their meal prepared, who can also take care of the food waste from each meal. Thus, we don’t have to worry much about the problem of producing large amounts of food waste.

- Q4. What if the bin is serving someone and at the same time someone else needs to throw trash?
- A4. A queue will be recorded for who requests to be served by the trash bin, and the bin will follow the first-raise_hand-first-serve rule.


# Solution Components:
## Container:
The purpose of it is to store trash. It needs to have a lid to contain the odor.
### Parts:
A Indoor trash bin [link1](https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Basics-Compact-Bathroom-Plastic/dp/B09Z776HYJ/ref=sr_1_7_ffob_sspa?crid=GW1WVZRZ7N7D&keywords=plastic%2Btrash%2Bbin&qid=1706151356&sprefix=plastic%2Btrashbin%2Caps%2C103&sr=8-7-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9tdGY&th=1), [link2](https://www.amazon.com/Superio-Plastic-Bedroom-Bathroom-Kitchen/dp/B08YRZ98KY/ref=sr_1_9?crid=2CGATST9J1PZW&keywords=plastic%2Btrash%2Bbin%2Bwith%2Blid%2Band%2Bpedal&qid=1706151417&sprefix=plastic%2Btrash%2Bbin%2Bwith%2Blid%2Band%2Bpadel%2Caps%2C117&sr=8-9&th=1), or similar items.

## Trash Bin Movement:
The trash bin needs to reach the user based on the commands coming from the detection system.

### Parts:
- a pair of DC motors (model: TBD with mechanical shop to see which type of motor fits better).
- a pair of caster wheels. For supporting and balancing the trash bin. [Link](https://www.amazon.com/Furniture-Plastic-Casters-Kitchen-Stainless/dp/B09Q37G919/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?keywords=small%2Bcasters%2Bwheels&qid=1706152011&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1)

The control circuit of the motors will be part of the PCB.

## Trash Bin Lid Control:
The trash bin needs to open when it is necessary (i.e. when the user needs to put the trash in the bin) and remain closed for the rest of the time. This can be done using a servo motor. In addition, the lid can only open outward.

### Parts:
- a servo motor (model: TBD with mechanical shop to see which type of motor fits better)
Note: probably this one [Link](https://www.amazon.com/Smraza-Digital-Steering-Waterproof-Control/dp/B0886H91DY?ref_=ast_sto_dp)

The control circuit of the servo motor will be part of the PCB.

### MCU:
ESP32-S3 has WiFi and Bluetooth integration, so it is better for receiving commands from the detection system. The MCU is also in charge of controlling the trash bin movement and the lid movement. It is a part of the PCB.

Potential MCU model: ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 [link](https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs) (S3 series)

## Motion and Object Detection:
Motion and object detection will be implemented using computer vision and some open-source models. They will be deployed to a microcomputer (single-board computer). The camera captures the image or video stream for motion and object detection. When the person does a specific gesture, it commands the trash bin to move to the person. When the trash bin is closed enough, it commands the trash bin to open the lid. After collecting the trash, the trash bin will navigate back to its original position based on the commands.

### Parts:
- Raspberry-Pi-4 with 2GB or 4GB [Link](https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/r/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-4-model-b)
- Raspberry-Pi camera module [Link](https://www.amazon.com/Smraza-Raspberry-Megapixels-Adjustable-Fish-Eye/dp/B07L2SY756)

Note: if the computation is not good enough, we will use Nvidia Jetson.

## Power:
Trash bin movement and trash bin lid control will be powered by a lithium battery, and motion and object detection is powered by a wall-plugged power supply, given that the subsystem for motion and object detection is stationary.

### Parts:
- Lithium battery: TBD
- Wall-plugged power supply: [Link](https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Supply-iUniker-Switch-Listed/dp/B097P2NLVH/ref=sr_1_3?adgrpid=1330409638929056&hvadid=83150817070992&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=95058&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvtargid=kwd-83150957904950%3Aloc-190&hydadcr=24365_13514965&keywords=raspberry+pi+4b+power+supply&qid=1706150750&sr=8-3)

# Criteria For Success:
1. Be able to recognize people’s hand wave gestures for throwing trash.
2. Travel to people who need to throw trash. The lid of the bin should remain closed until it reaches that person.
3. The target position should be close to the person but not the exact position.
4. Follow the first-wave-hand-first-serve rule.
5. Be able to receive control command from the motion and object detection system

Healthy Chair

Ryan Chen, Alan Tokarsky, Tod Wang

Healthy Chair

Featured Project

Team Members:

- Wang Qiuyu (qiuyuw2)

- Ryan Chen (ryanc6)

- Alan Torkarsky(alanmt2)

## Problem

The majority of the population sits for most of the day, whether it’s students doing homework or

employees working at a desk. In particular, during the Covid era where many people are either

working at home or quarantining for long periods of time, they tend to work out less and sit

longer, making it more likely for people to result in obesity, hemorrhoids, and even heart

diseases. In addition, sitting too long is detrimental to one’s bottom and urinary tract, and can

result in urinary urgency, and poor sitting posture can lead to reduced blood circulation, joint

and muscle pain, and other health-related issues.

## Solution

Our team is proposing a project to develop a healthy chair that aims at addressing the problems

mentioned above by reminding people if they have been sitting for too long, using a fan to cool

off the chair, and making people aware of their unhealthy leaning posture.

1. It uses thin film pressure sensors under the chair’s seat to detect the presence of a user,

and pressure sensors on the chair’s back to detect the leaning posture of the user.

2. It uses a temperature sensor under the chair’s seat, and if the seat’s temperature goes

beyond a set temperature threshold, a fan below will be turned on by the microcontroller.

3. It utilizes an LCD display with programmable user interface. The user is able to input the

duration of time the chair will alert the user.

4. It uses a voice module to remind the user if he or she has been sitting for too long. The

sitting time is inputted by the user and tracked by the microcontroller.

5. Utilize only a voice chip instead of the existing speech module to construct our own

voice module.

6. The "smart" chair is able to analyze the situation that the chair surface temperature

exceeds a certain temperature within 24 hours and warns the user about it.

## Solution Components

## Signal Acquisition Subsystem

The signal acquisition subsystem is composed of multiple pressure sensors and a temperature

sensor. This subsystem provides all the input signals (pressure exerted on the bottom and the

back of the chair, as well as the chair’s temperature) that go into the microcontroller. We will be

using RP-C18.3-ST thin film pressure sensors and MLX90614-DCC non-contact IR temperature

sensor.

## Microcontroller Subsystem

In order to achieve seamless data transfer and have enough IO for all the sensors we will use

two ATMEGA88A-PU microcontrollers. One microcontroller is used to take the inputs and

serves as the master, and the second one controls the outputs and acts as the slave. We will

use I2C communication to let the two microcontrollers talk to each other. The microcontrollers

will also be programmed with the ch340g usb to ttl converter. They will be programmed outside

the board and placed into it to avoid over cluttering the PCB with extra circuits.

The microcontroller will be in charge of processing the data that it receives from all input

sensors: pressure and temperature. Once it determines that there is a person sitting on it we

can use the internal clock to begin tracking how long they have been sitting. The clock will also

be used to determine if the person has stood up for a break. The microcontroller will also use

the readings from the temperature sensor to determine if the chair has been overheating to turn

on the fans if necessary. A speaker will tell the user to get up and stretch for a while when they

have been sitting for too long. We will use the speech module to create speech through the

speaker to inform the user of their lengthy sitting duration.

The microcontroller will also be able to relay data about the posture to the led screen for the

user. When it’s detected that the user is leaning against the chair improperly for too long from

the thin film pressure sensors on the chair back, we will flash the corresponding LEDs to notify

the user of their unhealthy sitting posture.

## Implementation Subsystem

The implementation subsystem can be further broken down into three modules: the fan module,

the speech module, and the LCD module. This subsystem includes all the outputs controlled by

the microcontroller. We will be using a MF40100V2-1000U-A99 fan for the fan module,

ISD4002-240PY voice record chip for the speech module, and Adafruit 1.54" 240x240 Wide

Angle TFT LCD Display with MicroSD - ST7789 LCD display for the OLED.

## Power Subsystem

The power subsystem converts 120V AC voltage to a lower DC voltage. Since most of the input

and output sensors, as well as the ATMEGA88A-PU microcontroller operate under a DC voltage

of around or less than 5V, we will be implementing the power subsystem that can switch

between a battery and normal power from the wall.

## Criteria for Success

-The thin film pressure sensors on the bottom of the chair are able to detect the pressure of a

human sitting on the chair

-The temperature sensor is able to detect an increase in temperature and turns the fan as

temperature goes beyond our set threshold temperature. After the temperature decreases

below the threshold, the fan is able to be turned off by the microcontroller

-The thin film pressure sensors on the back of the chair are able to detect unhealthy sitting

posture

-The outputs of the implementation subsystem including the speech, fan, and LCD modules are

able to function as described above and inform the user correctly

## Envision of Final Demo

Our final demo of the healthy chair project is an office chair with grids. The office chair’s back

holds several other pressure sensors to detect the person’s leaning posture. The pressure and

temperature sensors are located under the office chair. After receiving input time from the user,

the healthy chair is able to warn the user if he has been sitting for too long by alerting him from

the speech module. The fan below the chair’s seat is able to turn on after the chair seat’s

temperature goes beyond a set threshold temperature. The LCD displays which sensors are

activated and it also receives the user’s time input.

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