<aside> 📢 Canada's recycling system needs to be revised, as only 9% of plastic waste is recycled. At the same time, the rest is disposed of via methods that harm the environment, such as incineration [1]. Even though waste management facilities have access to advanced sensors and equipment to detect and identify materials, it is still not feasible to accurately sort some materials, such as black plastics.
</aside>
<aside> ❗ In Project 3, our team was assigned the task of solving this problem in a controlled environment. The team was divided into two sub-teams:
</aside>
<aside> 🔧 The modelling team had to decide whether to utilize a rotary or linear actuator, with the chosen method having to be no more than 127.00 mm from the back of the baseplate. Furthermore, the mechanism had to link directly to the actuator while sustaining the weight of the hopper. Additionally, when depositing the containers, the hopper must revolve about an axis dependent on the rung when the actuator is extended or rotated.
</aside>
<aside> 💻 The computing sub-team was tasked with developing a program to control a robotic arm called "Q-arm" and a terrestrial drone called "Q-bot" in both virtual and physical environments. The Q-arm was responsible for performing actions such as pick-up and drop-off, while the Q-bot had to identify bottles based on characteristics like weight, colour, and material type. Furthermore, the bottles needed to be sorted as clean or dirty, and the Q-bot would transfer them to appropriate drop-off bin locations while navigating along the yellow track.
</aside>
Q-bot transporting the contaminated containers to Bin04
Depositing the dirty container to Bin04.
Q-arm loads the container onto the hopper of the Q-bot from the servo table.
<aside> 1️⃣ Dispense a container at the Sorting Station.
</aside>
<aside> 2️⃣ Load containers with the same drop-off location onto a hopper mounted to the Q-bot.
</aside>
<aside> 3️⃣ Follow the yellow line and transfer the container(s) to the correct bin in the Recycling Station
</aside>
<aside> 4️⃣ Rotate the hopper to deposit the containers into the appropriate bin.
</aside>
<aside> 5️⃣ Return to the home position.
</aside>
I wrote this Pseudocode to outline the workflow of the program.
I wrote the following functions for the Virtual Environment
I made flowcharts for the Dispense and Load Container functions.
Before we started writing the code for our sorting system, I researched various sensors to determine which one to use for our project.
I wrote the transfer and main function for the Physical Environment
At the end of the project, our revised version of the program managed to detect, classify, and sort a diverse range of materials, satisfying all the objectives and constraints.