Foodinator

Targeting the global food crisis using the power of smartphones

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What is Foodinator?

Foodinator is an android application that streamlines user(donors) and consumer(food banks and underprivileged people) medium of food exchange via volunteers by allowing donors to directly at the easy of their access make a request for food pickup at their convenient location, the app then identifies nearby volunteers and redirects them to the donors for food pickup which is then transported to the nearby food banks and later to the underprivileged people. This app serves as a bridge to solve the food crisis in cities where there is wastage of food and no means of transporting the food within food lifespan and avoid any food wastage by transporting from one location to another in quick and efficient way. In the meantime, powerful machine learning techniques will generate a complete analysis and classify the food to be picked up by the volunteer and distribute it efficiently to various food banks based on the needs and capacity of the food banks at the ease of a mobile app at their own convenience.

How does it work?

Upon registering as an user on the application, the user has an option to either donate the food or signup as a volunteer. Once a request for donation is submitted the app finds the nearest volunteers and notifies them in real time of the food donor’s location to which they can respond to this activity as per their availability. The app then routes volunteer upon accepting request to the donor where the volunteer will scan and send the image of the donation to the to the server, where IBM Watson is used to classify the food categories based on which the volunteer will be routed to nearby food banks with need for food. IBM Watson's cognitive model is trained using predefined tags and images. Thus, the driver is now set to efficiently transport the donations from donor to food bank.

Significance

By the time a person with food available that is of no use to that person or is about to be stale or expired before it can be used by him/her, finds time from his schedule to visit a food bank and donate it for good cause the food may already reach it lifespan end, so as to avoid this scenario and promote donation of food among people this app will do all the required bridging between the producer or donor and food bank or consumer filling any gaps and streamlining the process in an efficient way. A recent survey conducted shows that, The average American family of four tosses over 1,160 pounds of food a year -- from scraps, to spills and spoilage. That’s 1.2 million calories enough to provide one person over 3,200 calories of food a day. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, roughly between 30 to 40 percent of the food supply is wasted, and Adding to the problem are issues like confusing food labels, such as "sale by dates" and "best if used by" --which are not food safety dates, but rather suggested times put on by manufacturers when the food is best to be eaten. If this is efficiently handled the world will be a better place to live in without hunger or food crisis. On Average 40 to 50 percent of food waste comes from consumers, and 50 to 60 percent from businesses, so bridging the gaps and connecting them to food banks at their own convenience is the key to solve this problem. Foodinator reduces this waiting time significantly and a step to improve the situation of food crisis and the pressing need of the hour.

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