Self-controlled Robot for Collection of Light Weight Waste in a Ground Area

Abstract

Solid waste has become one of the most daunting problems which the entire world faces today. The rapid increment of the human population and fast industrialization leads the way to numerous difficulties in garbage management. It has been revealed that there is high potential to pollute the public places frequently where people gather temporally, by the dumped light weight solid waste items. Moreover, there are no optimal solutions that have been implemented for these locations to monitor and collect the garbage continuously. In order to overcome the aforementioned problem, a self-controlled robot application has been implemented in this study as a proof of concept. This fully automatic robot can detect and collect light weight solid waste within a ground area. Further, it consists of four major implantation components namely, Robot Platform, Image Processing Unit, Sensor Component and Collection Arm. Garbage object detection algorithm is used to clearly recognize the garbage objects and sensor component assists the device to navigate towards the garbage by evading obstacles. A wide rotating brush in the collection arm, conveyer belt and bin are attached, to grab, push and dump the detected garbage objects respectively. The robot has been tested for determining its efficiency for lifting the light weight waste objects and path detection. Test results have proven that it consumes 27 seconds of average time to lift the objects within the weight range from 0.5 grams to 27 grams. Further, it makes the navigation decisions averagely within 8 seconds, 20 seconds and 80 seconds towards the single, double and triple obstacles situations. The concept can be further improved for navigation under the complex situations, object classification and solid waste collection.