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Solar-Tracking Litterminator

CSEF · 2023 Environmental Engineering First Award

Chudgar Sharanya · 8

Overview

The world is being faced with the detrimental crisis of litter pollution. Clean-up attempts would require precious human effort and widespread usage of expensive energy. However, if a robot did this job instead and utilized an efficient solar panel as its power source, our work would be much easier. Thus, the goal of this project was to invent an autonomous trash-collecting robot powered by a sun-tracking solar panel to combat pollution in an eco-friendly way. Using various robotics parts, motors, sensors, an Arduino, and a solar panel, the robot was created to locate and track the sun, then use the energy to pick up and sort trash. After multiple prototypes, the robot was produced, with two floors, a solar panel and trash-collecting scooper on opposite sides, various sensors, power buses, a battery, and an Arduino. Code (using Arduino IDE) was written such that the solar panel located and tracked the sun throughout the day. The program used proximity sensors to detect an object; servos, the pan, and the wheels to pick up the object; and an inductive sensor to sort the object. The solar panel was found to generate more power than a stationary solar panel over a period of 6 hours. The trash-collector identified trash 100% of the time; picked up trash or recycle 80% of the time; and correctly sorted it 80% of the time when it was a metal object and 100% of the time when it was a non-metal object. Therefore, this project’s goal was achieved.

Source coverage

This record comes from a published award list, not a complete project archive. Its abstract comes from CSEF's public project showcase as archived by the Internet Archive before judging (https://web.archive.org/web/20230401224130/https://ca-csef.zfairs.com/showcase/ShowcaseInfo?f=838e60b7-ea75-46e8-865c-fde4864244b3); the version presented may differ.

Awards (3)

  • Category Award: 1
  • Sponsored Award: Junior Division First Place Award
  • Project of the Year

Competition history

  • CSEF 2023 Environmental Engineering · Entry J1120

Resources

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Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

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