Trashbot: Mobile Garbage Collecting Robot

Sweeney, Matthew; Wu, Yuhan; Rincon Rogers, Cristobal; Loughlin, Liliana

Student Work

Trashbot: Mobile Garbage Collecting Robot

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Pollution poses a significant challenge in our modern world, with humans generating vast amounts of plastic waste that endangers the environment and its wildlife. Currently, addressing this issue relies heavily on human interventions, such as clean-up efforts on roads and beaches. Unfortunately, these are typically inconsistent and unreliable. To tackle this problem, the Trashbot Major Qualifying Project at Worcester Polytechnic Institute is developing a prototype robot for the autonomous collection of plastic bottles and aluminum cans. This innovative project aims to create a robot that can navigate WPI's quadrangle independently, detect litter, approach it, collect it, and dispose of it in a designated location. The Trashbot project is a groundbreaking initiative, marking the beginning of a multi-year interdisciplinary endeavor. In the initial phase of the project, the team has achieved several milestones. They have enabled the robot to autonomously navigate using a GPS module and Inertial Measurement Unit, detect trash using a depth camera, and pass raw images to a trained object detection and classification AI model, YOLO. Additionally, the team has designed and fabricated a 4-degree-of-freedom articulated manipulator, implemented a path planning algorithm using a graph state model and installed a LiDAR fixture for future enhancements.

This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

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