Team Just Us look to clean up this year

Leonardo’s apprentices outline their smart bin concept and key features for their prototype device for this year’s Apprentice Automation Challenge.

From our brief, we have decided to go ahead with the concept of a Smart Bin. We believe the features that we include on the bin will help increase accessibility and automate a common problem, as well as enhancing health and well-being.

This Smart Bin ideally is targeted towards people with limited mobility and the elderly, as its advanced features will be able to aid them with their bin management. We plan to implement:

• A weight scale reader to let them know how heavy the bin is and indicate when they can take the bin out at a comfortable weight
• A height sensor to let them know when the bin is full without them having to physically check
• An auto sealing mechanism which aids the elderly to tie their bin bag up, to which users with arthritis may struggle due to lack of strength in their fingers
• A bin calendar to remind the user when to take out the bin as people like the elderly may not have the best of memories
• An interior compartment on wheels which allows the user to wheel the bin out instead of carrying it and exerting unnecessary physical movement to remove your bin

All these features allow the target audience to make removing waste from their home easier without impeding on their overall health and well-being. We believe this is a common problem within households round the UK

Our concept, a Smart Bin, will cater to the target audience with the following functionality below.

Our Smart Bin has:

• Two compartments, one for general waste and one for recycling. This is to encourage good environmental practices
• An inner compartment that you can wheel out from the outer complex. This inner compartment is on wheels and is implemented in order to aid the removal of the bin bag, as you can drag it to your outer bins
• An LCD screen which will relay a variety of information, such as a bin calendar and weight and height readings
• A height sensor in the lid in order to read how full the bin is. The LCD screen will then tell you it is time to take out the bin bag
• A weight sensor on the bottom of the inner bin which will utilise load cells to read the weight of the bin bag and relay it to the LCD screen
• A quick reload feature which will allow the user to fit a reel of bin bags onto the bottom of the inner bin
• An automatic opening lid mechanism that will sense radiation from the human hand and open the lid. The lid will then stay open for ten seconds