Inspiration
In our office, we have to sort the garbage in two trash cans: either paper or others. Unfortunately, the error of sorting trash is enormous. For this reason, in Germany, it is not possible to recycle more than max 10% of the garbage. This makes Germany Europa Meister in producing waste. We decided to change this by using smart technology to reduce the trash sorting error and enforce more environment-friendly behavior - at least at our office.
What it does
The system uses a pre-trained model to sort objects. If the model detects paper type trash, the paper trash can will open and allow you to throw the trash inside. Otherwise, it will stay close.
How we built it
The classifier was integrated into a simple IOS app. The user takes a picture of the trash. The classifier detects if the trash is a paper or not. If the trash is a paper, the app sends a post request to a flask application which is installed to a raspberry pi. The flask app turns on a motor that is connected to trash can cover using a simple band. The cover opens and the user can throw the trash inside. If the classifier doesn't detect a paper, no request will be sent.
Challenges we ran into
The motor is very simple and it was not possible to make it turn in the opposite direction to close the can cover after a few seconds.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We prove that we can build a very effective and useful system to protect the environment with less than 100 euro budget.
What we learned
Teamwork, AI, hacking, having fun and new tech.
What's next for What garbage?
- Improve the UI.
- Complex sorting of trash e.g. paper, plastic, glass, etc.
- better hardware components.
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