C.P. Ravikumar, Texas Instruments

   As student teams put on their thinking hats looking for challenges to take on in “Texas Instruments Innovation Challege: India Analog Design Contest,” I am tempted to throw an idea your way.  I will be glad if a team gets inspired to solve this problem, which has a social impact.  If I find time, I will toss a few more of these ideas at you. Remember, these are suggestions – you may trash them, if you don’t think they are smart!

 Why not smart garbage bins? Why not, indeed? Just about everything in the world is becoming smart! As the urbanization of the world continues, there is one stinking problem we have to deal with. Garbage! Not too long ago, we had a trash disposal problem in Bangalore. This did have one positive outcome: the awareness about the problem grew and a significant number of households in Bangalore began to segregate their daily waste output.

Garbage segregation is a major concern today. In a home environment,  we see several categories of garbage: (a) dry garbage, (b) wet garbage, (c)  hazardous waste, (d) medical waste, (e) paper.  Cereal boxes, bottles, old/broken equipment that you wish to throw away are examples of dry garbage. These can be reused or recycled. Kitchen waste is an example of wet garbage. This can be turned into compost. Batteries are an example of hazardous waste; these must be segregated from the other garbage to protect our environment. Bandages, syringes, cotton etc. are medical waste – they must be separated to maintain hygiene and protect our environment. Newspapers and magazines must be separated so that they can be recycled.

Classifying garbage is a constant activity in any home or office environment. There must be billions of garbage bins in use. Can we add some “smartness” to these garbage bins?  It appears that only a smart human being can correctly classify garbage into the appropriate category. Moreover, the categorization may vary from one location to another. I have seen garbage bins with three compartments – “Recycle,” “Reuse,” and “Landfill” in office buildings. The garbage classification method I discussed in the beginning of this essay is prevalent in many apartment buildings.  Therefore, the smart garbage analyzer must be customized according to the garbage bin.

Consider these before you let your imagination go wild!

Cost will clearly be an important consideration if you are going to make a smart garbage can. Please find out the cost of a garbage bin used in homes and public places. I would hazard a guess (pardon the expression) that people may be willing to pay an additional 10% to 20% for adding intelligence to their bins.  Note that there will be two types of costs – initial cost and the cost of maintenance.

Your smart garbage bin can be anywhere from “fairly smart” to “ultra smart.”  One can add so many features! It may use computer vision and/or chemical sensors to classify garbage. It may help the user in locating the right bin by blinking an LED indicator, flashing a message, or playing out a recorded message. It can be on a wireless sensor network and be aware of other garbage cans in the vicinity and direct the user to an alternate bin if it is unable to accept a certain type of waste. It may be capable of accepting garbage and move it to the right bin automatically. It can even profile users who correctly/incorrectly dispose garbage and provide periodical statistics! It can help upload the data to a server, where one can analyze the daily/weekly collection of garbage. You may be able to think of even more features, some of them very specific to your region.

Let me get you started!

Read the blog posts “Weighing your options and selecting your project” (Part I, Part II, and Part III) and think of these questions. Write your ideas down in your project notebook. 

a)      Trying a design a smart garbage bin from scratch based on the above description will be considered (select one of the choices and think why it is the correct answer)

  1. Top-down approach
  2. Bottom-up approach
  3. Inspired-and-innovate approach
  4. A mix of all these methods

b)      How will you use the wealth of information at “TI’s Applications Home Page” to seek help in designing a smart garbage bin? Is this application already mentioned? Is there any application that comes close? What TI semiconductors would best fit you application?

c)       Can you collect at least 10 relevant pieces of literature for this project? You may even find existing commercial solutions! How will you make your solution an innovative one, which has its own value? Will your solution solve a problem specific to your geographical region?

d)      How many different designs can you think of for the smart garbage bin? How will you compare them and select one?

e)      What does your end product look like? What will be the electronics you will include in the smart garbage bin? What about non-electronic components?

f)       Estimate the cost of building the smart garbage bin.  How will you find the funds for this project, without compromising on the nature of the project too much?

g)      What are the tradeoffs involved in designing a smart garbage bin? For example, is it possible that you can have a bin that costs less to build but more to maintain? What will contribute towards the maintenance costs?

h)      What type of embedded processor will be required for your smart garbage bin?

i)        What different kinds of analog ICs will you need? Think of the categories - Power Management, Analog Signal Chain, RF.

j)        How will you estimate the impact of the smart garbage bin on the environment? What quantitative metrics will you be able to measure and report?

k)      How acceptable will your solution be to the society?

As you go into through this exercise,  you may tear sheets from your project notebook and throw them away,  or toss some coffee cups, apple cores and chocolate wrappers. Be smart in disposing your waste! I invite non-student readers to make related suggestions to students. 

Anonymous
  • Hi Jay Patel,

    I encourage you to keep thinking in this direction - do not hesitate to  make your proposal even more bulletproof and submit it again! I like your idea of detecting fire!

  • Respected Sir,

                      We thought of this idea last year and we also gave our proposal in an analog device contest  but unfortunately it was not selected. We thought of making a wireless sensor network of these garbage bins having sensors which are capable of determining the level of garbage, wether there is fire in garbage and presescence of any toxic gas. We thought of using a sonar sensor to determine the level of garbage. Well we also thought of preventing animals from eating garbage.

                       This can really help in better city management.

  • Aditya Gupta,

    Thank you for your response.

    The idea of smart garbage bins itself is not new.  As I have mentioned, there are even commercial smart bins available today!  Your mail helps me illustrate what innovation means. I want you to ask your parents how much they paid for their first computer or the first cellular phone.Also find out what functionalities they supported, how much storage they had, what speed they operated at, etc. Compare them to what you paid for your computer and what functionalities/features your computer supports.   Constant innovation has helped bring the improvements we see in electronic equipment.

    I am happy to hear that you think the problem is hard to solve. Challenges are supposed to be challenging!  If you are convinced that the problem is worth solving, you must put on your thinking hats and see how you will come up with a solution that will address the problems you have pointed out. Please note that there are many solutions to a problem. To solve the problem of summer heat, you can use a hand fan, a ceiling fan, a table fan, an air cooler, or an air conditioner. All these solutions coexist and cater to different needs and markets. Is there a "hand fan" equivalent of a smart bin?

    Thanks for writing. Keep thinking!

    Regards,

    Ravikumar

  • SIR even if i am able to classify the waste into biodegradable and non-biodegradable how will i separate it or like decompose the biodegradable part efficiently enough (within the cost limit) because the waste can be trashed in any way like some may throw it in polythenes (which is legally banned but it not practically) and some may even throw metals like pieces.. Keeping all these in mind the design will become so big that it can be implemented at district level not at all homes.

    And is this www.waste-management-world.com/.../waste-sorting-a-look-at-the-separation-and-sorting-techniques-in-todayrsquos-european-market.html not same like your idea, if i'm wrong please correct me.

    Thank you SIR

  • Pradeep, thanks for your note. I am glad to know of your interest. I suggest that you try the methodology outlined in my blog. It may save you some effort. Using computer vision for classification is a good idea, but if you are a student aspiring to take part in the analog design contest, you will be dealing with many constraints, time being the most important one. I don't intend to discourage you, but I wanted to ensure you are aware of the scale of the problem. There may be other sensors that might help. Keep thinking!