An Initiative for a Cleaner Environment — Autonomous Cleaning Robot
Background
If we take a moment to look around at our world from an environmental perspective, we start to see the trash and litter left by us whether it be out on the sidewalks or the unhygienic bus and train stations that impacts how we view our surroundings. Although it may not be an issue to some people, the fact that we live in a filthy environment is something that should concern us. There are existing solutions such as industrial and commercial-grade cleaning robots- however, their purpose is to keep a facility or housing unit clean which is different from the goal proposed in this article.
The inspiration behind this article is due to the cleanliness of Septa Market Frankford Line, or MFL as it is abbreviated. As an everyday commuter to and from Drexel University, there seems to be litter all around from walking to the train station to getting off and heading to classes. Some items that can be found are used-up syringes which are health hazards, wrappers, and plastic bottles. Not only that, but some trash also produces foul-odors which can deter individuals from taking the train all together and generally when an area has terrible conditions, it can be perceived as dangerous.
Mission
What these robot models and its development process hopes to achieve is to keep certain areas, whether it’d be in an outdoors or indoors environments clean. Places can include houses, parks, sidewalks and streets. The fundamental issues lie within people themselves in which they do not see the need to put their trash in a designated trash or recycle bin when they can throw it out on the sidewalks as it is much more convenient. Our mission is to provide a solution to a cleaner environment and an initiative to take care of our environment.
Designs and Features Planned
This industrial-grade and commercial-grade cleaning robot which will be named, Prototype-A1 and Prototype-B2, will have the ability to take sensory input in from the surrounding area from a camera to determine three factors:
- Seeing where people congregate determines if an area with more people results in more trash or not.
- To collect data to develop a panoramic cleaning map in which the robot can follow and determine where most of the littering occurs.
- To scan the most commonly littered items are and what are they composed of.
Both prototypes will include a camera that allows it to see and avoid obstacles that is a navigation-based system and also the design of the robot will be circular in design as well. To help navigate such as a patch of grass or concrete, it will be fitted with more heavy-duty wheels because of this. To reach garbage from further out, the robot will have an extendable arm which has its own compartment it can retract once no longer needed. This arm is located on the top of the robot and is 12 inches or 1 foot in length.
Use-Cases and Robot Models
The Prototype-A1 model of the robot will be dedicated to industrial use where it will primarily function in an outdoors environment. The application, either on mobile or computer, will have granular control of what the machine should do if it encounters an unspecified item not found in memory, determine which areas to patrol and clear and other controls. The design would be a similar build to the DustClean, developed by RoboTechsrl.
A secondary model, Prototype-B1, will be planned for release which is a commercial version that is dedicated for use in an indoors environment. The major difference between the two is that the B1 type model will not include heavy-duty parts and will use similar material and design similar to the Samsung Powerbot R7070. Another major difference between the two prototype models is that B1 would have a voice assistant as well that would respond to commands such as: “Hey [Robot], clean [this area]”, in which the robot would respond to its name and the command it is given, which is clean. Then the robot would clean the area stated to them. Voice assistant is not needed for the use of A1.
Development Process
The development of the software would be the most complicated aspect of developing the robot itself. It would be costly as not only do we have to implement the features in our design board, but also that the functionality of the robot functions properly at least 95%, with minimal issues experience. Not only that, but there is also the app implementation which also takes time and money to build and implement for different operating systems.
Data Collection
Since all robot models will have a camera for navigation and collect data for various purposes, the user would need to be able to access this information. On mobile devices, there would be an application on both the Play Store on Android as well as the App Store on iOS. In this application, the user would have full access to recordings that utilizes both physical storage as well as cloud storage. There would also be a separate section for the panoramic map of the device once sufficient data is collected to show the user where high levels of trash are being collected as well as additional information.
Privacy and Security
In a society where technology, IoT and the interaction of Ubiquitous devices is a part of everyday life, it’s important to recognize what privacy and security is. Privacy can be defined in this case where personal data can be collected as the right to control who has access to your information and how it can be used. Security, on the other hand, can be defined as the protection of the data collected from threat actors and unauthorized access. In a study, it was determined that smart home — privacy protection tools are simple, preventative, proactive solutions, and more control which is what users would have preferred, otherwise a lack of knowledge regarding the technology itself would make the users themselves think that it is not worth looking into and that it requires too much effort when something could have been prevented in the first place.
Regarding privacy of the device, only the owner and whoever they share the data can see the information collected from the device such as the panoramic mapping and any recording collected by the robot for analysis. Regarding the recordings and any other information, it is held locally on the mobile device or computer, making it secure and that only the device owner can access it. If the user wants to upload the files to the cloud, they will be given options to upload their files either over Google Drive or over Microsoft One Drive.
