Trashinator3000

A mechanized trash grabber arm, integrated with an app to make collecting trash fun, and to visualize community progress by replacing trash with beautiful virtual flowers!

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Inspiration

One of our members has a friend who regularly goes outside to pick up trash using a grabber and a bag. He's the only one any of us knew who did that. We thought that if this process was gamified, more people might be interested in helping in keeping the environment clean! We wanted to have both a competitive aspect (XP points) and a collaborative aspect (the virtual blooming flowers) to encourage people to pick up litter. We also wanted an option for people to help save the environment without actually picking up trash themselves (the "I see trash!" button).

What it does

The Trashinator3000 can be operated by simply pressing the button on the handle, which closes the grabber and allows you to pick up trash. If trash is picked up, the grabber detects this, plays a tone, and records the position of this trash using the onboard GPS. If the user has the app open, they will be able to now see that their XP (experience points) have gone up by 10, and that in place of the trash they picked up is a glowing virtual flower. In an area where many users have picked up a lot of trash, the area will seem to be a blossoming garden! This positive feedback encourages users to keep picking up trash.

How we built it

We used Autodesk Fusion360 to model the grabber, then we manufactured it using laser cutting and 3D printing. For the electronics, we used an ESP32 to handle Bluetooth communication between the grabber and the phone. We used a NEO-6M GPS module to find the location of the grabber even when not connected to the app. The grabber also uses an IR LED and receiver to identify if it is holding something. The grabber is mechanized using a button, a servo motor and set of laser cut gears. Finally, for the software, we used Unity for the frontend, to display the map, characters, flowers, etc. We used Firestore to store the database of users, flowers, trash hotspots, etc. We used Firebase Cloud Functions to retrieve and send data to and from the database, and we also used it to periodically run algorithms to determine trash hotspots based on collective user feedback (the "I see trash!" button).

Challenges we ran into

We ran into a lot of trouble in the hardware, software, and electronics. First, getting the correct gear ratios was quite a challenge, and manufacturing these parts successfully took several tries. For software, we had a lot of trouble getting Firebase set up properly when using Unity on an Android phone (surprisingly hard!) and we had to pivot to using Firebase Cloud Functions for this purpose. For electronics, we had several electronic parts that took some time to set up, like the GPS module and the IR sensor. Integrating the Bluetooth functionality in Unity and the ESP32 was also quite the challenge.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the fact that all three aspects (hardware, electronics, and software) are all quite well fleshed out, perhaps thanks to the fact that we had a variety of majors on our team. We are proud of how polished the hardware looks, especially the head of the grabber. We are also proud of the fact that we were able to use several functionalities relating to Firestore and Unity that we had never even heard of before yesterday!

What we learned

We as a team have learned more about 3D modelling, laser cutting, 3D printing, general electronics, sensor fusion, Unity, Firebase, and general programming. As mentioned above we have a variety of majors on our team so everyone got some experience in something they usually have no exposure to!

What's next for Trashinator3000

Well, our first model will be used at least once by our good friend who inspired this project, the one who regularly picks up trash and really serves as a shining example of what we could all be doing. We truly believe in the concept behind this project - more to come in the future potentially! One of the most important things to ensure next: how to prevent users from cheating? We have several ideas for sensor solution we could implement...stay tuned!

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