Waste Management Machine

As every year passes, the concern over waste increases steadily.Based on incomplete reports from its parties, the Basel Convention estimated 338 million tonnes of waste was generated in 2001.Though, above mentioned estimate is not officially correct but it gives us idea that how much waste we produce each year.

We all know about conditions near the waste sites and dumps, due to these difficult conditions,it is not always possible for humans to do all tasks(collection, transport, processing or disposal, managing and monitoring of waste materials ) involved in Waste Management.


Our Objective:

To build an autonomous robot who can navigate himself through a messy environment, avoid obstacles, search for various kinds of recyclables, sort the recyclable, and store the recyclable by its classification.

Hardware Requirements:

• Atmel AVR ATMega 128 general-purpose microprocessor:It is a low-power CMOS 8-bit microcontroller based on the AVR enhanced RISC architecture.
• We will need 6 pieces of switches, 8-bit port headers and special servo headers. 
• 1 LCD header, an RS232 header
• An ADC header and 
•  JTAG port for programming: Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) is the common name for what was later standardized as the IEEE 1149.1 Standard Test Access Port and Boundary-Scan Architecture. 

We will also need to build a system so that our robot can move, recognize important things from junk and able to collect them. You will find complete details of this project in a report given below useful links.

Useful Links:
Tony Soprano "Waste Managment"


Related Video:


Related Projects:

Waste Management Systems
Tiny Bio Gas Generator
Robotics

Pure water with the help of SMS

Pure water with the help of SMS is project based on getting pure water using Hand Pump.Though we have already discussed about various projects based on water purification such as Pedal Powered Water Filter  and  Solar powered water purification system but in Africa the most common source of pure water is Hand Pump. If it stops working, people get force to drink dirty water as a alternative. This project idea solves this problem.

People living in rural area of Africa can use mobile phone to drink clean water. Researchers of Britain  has build Data Transmitter which can be embedded inside the hand pump.

This transmitter sends sms when hand pump stops working. These transmitter  would be installed in 70 villages of Kenya.  Information about this technology has been discussed at General of Hydroinformatics.


Dependance on Hand pump

Millions of people living in Africa are dependent on Handpump, but it is believed that 1/3rd of these hand pumps not works properly.Handpumps located at distant places repairs takes even months. Africa has changed in last decade and it is believed that people who own mobiles are more than people having access to clean water.

That's why for better management of hand pumps Researches from Oxford university has used mobile phone.Researchers put Transmitter  in the handle of the pump. It measures speed of the handle,using which it can measure water flow inside the pump.

Using this technique , central office keeps on getting updates about pumps and mechanical can be mar shelled immediately after fault reports.

Other advantage of this technique is that they can measure total consumption in Kenya.

Related Projects:

Pedal Powered Water Filter
Solar powered water purification system

Solar Powered bicycle

Solar bicycle consists of battery,DC-DC boost converter, Solar Panel, Motor and Motor controller.It will get its energy from three places brakes,  pedals of the bicycle, and by solar-cell.


There are three ways you can build solar powered cycle:

a) Build an electric cycle and charge its batteries using electricity provided by solar cells at home. One time charge is sufficient for 9 Miles (15 km approx).If you use this cycle to visit nearby places; this is good option for you.

b) Second method consists of placing both solar cells and batteries on the cycle. Placing solar cells on bicycle itself would help in recharging batteries while travelling.

c)Third one and my most preferred one is to build hybrid cycle whose batteries not only charged by solar cell, but also use energy of regenerative braking and pedaling.




Useful Link:

Solar Electric Bicycle Project
Step by step process of building your own

Speed and Distance Test:


Related:

Mechanical Engineering Projects
Electrical & Electronics
Solar Projects

GSM based Irrigation system

In recent years mobile has become household name. Its reach is wide and anyone can be contacted anywhere using mobile phones. In a last decade we have seen transformation in mobile technology and now it can be used for many purposes and not confined with only communication. Mobile Banking, Photography and Wireless Printing are some of the examples of its distinctive uses.Today, we will discuss that how farmers can use mobiles in agriculture.


Today we will discuss three projects related to GSM based irrigation and in future discuss about their implementation.


How GSM can be used by farmers?

In farming there is lot of trivial task that needs to be done manually by the farmer. If we can give control of this these things to farmer using mobile phone, it would help farmers to save their time and money.

Automation of farming can be done by following ways:

GSM pump controller: Farmers can on or off water pump remotely using mobile phone and micro controller.



Weather Updates using Mobile Phones: Mobile phone will get weather updates in sms form in real time with the help of web server and mobile infrastructure.Implementation of this service requires Agriculture SMS Management system which we will discuss in next post.

Pest Control: The Pest control consists of two components, a remote monitoring system (RMS) and a host control system (HCS). RMS would be used to monitor environment and pests and HCS would store that information into database.

Control Farming Vehicles with Mobile: In the video shown below , you can see how one student control tracker using his GSM Mobile Phone:



Useful links:

GSM Based Automatic irrigation system
An SMS based Rural Application

Related Video:



Related Posts:
Mechanical
Electronics
Electrical

Soccer Playing mini Robots

Football doesn’t needs any introduction, it is one of the most famous sport every played on earth. This game had taken giant leap when played by robot. I have seen that in any robotic engineering competition, game of robots football is inevitable.

 Robot Football requires smart movable robots that need to act as a team in real time and adjust in a very dynamic environment to accomplish definite objectives.It is very complex topic, but I would try to share basics of this project with you.


Concepts:

Artificial Intelligence: While playing football robot would face new challenges, you should have knowledge of AI to program it in such a way that it can take its own decisions according to the situation.

Real time image processing: It is self explanatory, that why we need that.

Autonomous systems: It’s up to you which type of robot you want to build, fully autonomous or computer controlled one.

Mechatronics : It is a science involved with both Mechanical and Electronics. Without having knowledge of both you would not able to move forward with this project.
Required Material:

Lego MINDSTORMS NXT Series

It is extremely helpful in removing complexities, because without it, you would face hardware constraints and lose focus from your primary goal.MINDSTORMS kit includes NXT Brick, Microprocessors with Bluetooth, Servo Motors, Light, Touch, Sound and Distance sensors.

 Required Programs:

LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT: It is a drag and drop software and developing programs with this new software is fun and easy. It comes with building instructions and programming guides to easily begin constructing and programming with MINDSTORMS NXT robots.

Realterm: Realterm is a terminal program specially designed for capturing, controlling and debugging binary and other difficult data streams.

Useful Link: 
IIT Kanpur Micro Robot

Related Video:

 

Related Post:
Robotics Project

Fruit Picking Robots

Rough sketch of fruit picker robot using Microsoft Paint            

Have you seen large fruits garden with lots of fruits. For a fruit gardener, it is extremely important to harvest fruit in time. In a large garden there is need of many people to select which fruit is ripen enough to pick out and which doesn't?


It is time consuming process and if not done in time would cause wastage and money loss. This project idea is about fruit picking robot which not only work as a fruit picker but smart enough to pick only those fruits which are ripen enough.

Level: Difficult

Challenges:

Fruit picking is more complicated than it appears. It is extremely difficult for robot to pick correct fruit without causing any damage to the surrounding.It involves many concepts and technologies to complete this task effectively.

Robot should have following capabilities for fruit picking to work:

1.  Image Sensing
2.  Reach to every part of tree
3. Movable Platform
4. All data about surrounding
5. Box to put all fruits

How to build one?

Even though I have discussed most of the above concepts in this blog at separate posts but this project needs to use all of them at once.

Image Sensing:  Our Robot needs to sense the environment and takes decision accordingly. It is very important because without it we can’t find out exact location of fruit as well as whether it is ripped or not.

Reach to every part: To maximize reach of our robot, we would build many flexible arms on each side of it. Arms of our robot would be flexible enough they not only pick fruit from anywhere on the tree, but they would not cause any harm to surrounding objects. Technically we need more degree of freedom with our arm. Some Stanford students achieved it using Visibility Graph Search and Inverse Kinematics .Details of their project is available here. http://ai.stanford.edu/~mitul/btp.html
Related Post on this blog:
Robotic Arm with Gripper

Movable Platform: Platform of our machine should have capability to revolve 360 degree, without it we would not able to gather information about the surrounding. To build your platform, you would need Motor drivers, Navigation system, Motion planner, and Robot Controller

Box: It is a place where robot would put its fruit after picking them. It would be at the top of the machine.
 All data about surrounding: Data interpretation about the surrounding is important because without it we would not able to move forward in correct path. You would get details about path finding in following links:
Vehicle pathplanning in three dimensions using optics
Autonomous Pathfinding

Related Video :


Related Projects:
Robotics

Line follower Robot

Some of the earliest Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) were line following mobile robots. They might follow a visual line painted or embedded in the floor or ceiling or an electrical wire in the floor. Most of these robots operated a simple "keep the line in the center sensor" algorithm.
This simple robot is designed to be able to follow a black line on the ground without getting off the line too much. The robot has two sensors installed underneath the front part of the body, and two DC motors drive wheels moving forward. A circuit inside takes an input signal from two sensors and controls the speed of wheels’ rotation. The control is done in such a way that when a sensor senses a black line, the motor slows down or even stops. Then the difference of rotation speed makes it possible to make turns. For instance, in the figure on the right, if the sensor somehow senses a black line, the wheel on that side slows down and the robot will make a right turn.


Useful Material :

A Line follower Robot (PDF)
Line follower robot  (pdf)

Related Video :


Related Projects :

Robotics Projects
Mechanical Engineering Projects
Physics Projects
Electronics Project
Electrical Projects

Sixth Sense technology of Pranav Mistry

'SixthSense' is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

The SixthSense prototype comprises a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera contained in a pendant like, wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to a mobile computing device in the user’s pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks users' hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques.



Sixth Sense prototypes cost approximately $350 to build, the main cost being the micro-projector.

Hardware and Software Detail :

It is very generous of Pranav Mistry that he had announced in Nov 2009 that the source code will be released under Open Source.You can find sixth sense open source page here.

Download Software ( C++ and C#)



Related Projects :
Robotics Project
Computer Science Projects
Mechanical engineering Projects
Electronics Projects
Electrical projects

RFID based mobile payment system

Mobile payment is an alternative payment method. Instead of paying with cash, cheque or credit cards, a consumer can use a mobile phone to pay for a wide range of services and digital or hard goods.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the use of a wireless non-contact system that uses radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to transfer data from a tag attached to an object, for the purposes of automatic identification and tracking. Some tags require no battery and are powered by the electromagnetic fields used to read them.

Mobile Payment system is a service that aims to securely and conveniently move retail banking and financial services to cell-phones. It is a mobile-banking facility for the unbanked.
How to build my own ?

Circuit Diagram and Details


Related Projects :
Mechanical engineering Projects
Computer Projects
Electrical Project ideasElectronics Projects
Robotics Project

Human Tracking Fan System

Fan is one of the most important tool that human beings have ever developed.First fan came into existence in India.The punkah fan was used in the India in the early 500 BC. It had a canvas covered frame that was suspended from the ceiling. Servants, known as punkawallahs, pulled a rope connected to the frame to move the fan back and forth.In 19th century Industrial Revolution took place and fan kept on evolving ever since.

What's the significance in Fan in Modern World?

Fan is the most important electronic machine for poor living all across the world. It is not costly as Air conditioners and coolers, runs on low power and easy to carry(table fan).

The only problem with table fan is its inefficiency, we need to adjust it according to our position or start its motor which rotates it all over the place in 180 degrees and wasting its power by directing air at empty spaces for much of the rotation cycle.

What is Human Tracking Fan System ?

We are trying to build a fan which can track human and adjust itself according to the position of a person sitting in a room.

How it works ?

It consists of two PIR Sensors which can detect person sitting position because humans typically radiate more infra-red light than their surroundings, such as a wall for instance, detecting motion is fairly simple.

How to build one ?

Click here to learn more about it.




Related Projects :

Mechanical engineering Projects
Computer Projects
Electrical Project ideas

Electronics Projects
Robotics Project

GSM Operated Robot

Mobiles are very common today and there are very few places left where mobile signals can't reach.Imagine, when you can control robots from anywhere in the world and  this is now possible with GSM operated robot.

GSM (SMS) Controlled Wireless Robot” is automatic robots which are capable of receiving signal using your mobile, for e.g. in the video given below that robot is controlled by keys dialed using mobile. When mobile user dial 6 robot starts moving forward and when user dials 3 it stops.

Other Uses :

This technology can be used to lock and open door of your house, controlling electronic appliances at your home and starting or turning off your car.

Related PDF :
GSM Based Electrical Control System


Related Project
Robotic Engineering Project
Mechanical Projects
Electronics Project

Power Transmission without Wires

Wireless energy transfer or wireless power is the transmission of electrical energy from a power source to an electrical load without artificial interconnecting conductors. Wireless transmission is useful in cases where interconnecting wires are inconvenient, hazardous, or impossible.

Tesla discovered that electrical energy can be transmitted through the earth and the atmosphere. In the course of his research he successfully lit lamps at moderate distances and was able to detect the transmitted energy at much greater distances.

Uses : 
Phones are now an integral component in the daily lives of people. Smartphones give access to movies, internet, and even books. This versatility and increased use can also lead to a shorter battery life. A phone with video viewing capabilities will be a heavy load on the unit’s battery. With phones utilizing 3G and 4G technology, even heavier demands are placed on the battery. As technology improves even further to provide for a larger entertainment experience on the phone, this could also lead to further battery degradation if the current battery situation isn’t addressed. To have a fully operational phone throughout the day, a wireless energy transfer car charger can be utilized.

Related PDF :
Recharge laptops and cellphones.
Power transmission to moving vehicles.

Related Video :

Similar Posts : 

Electrical Project
Electronics Project
Mechanical Projects
Physics Projects

Tricycle powered by pedals and electricity

An electric tricycle is a bicycle having three wheels with an electric motor used to power the vehicle.Tricycle which is powered by electricity would be very helpful for people who use cycles in there daily life. It would not only increase speed of the cycle but also helps them in paddling.


Concept :

Concept of this project is same as many electric vehicles we discussed before in Automobile Projects such as Solar Powered Cycle. It is powered by motor which is connected with battery that is charged with regular electricity available at home.
If you want , you can use some solar plates in vehicle itself to charge its batteries.


Components:
Components needed for this project are similar to those which we used in solar bicycle project and they are:

• Lithium-ion battery 
• DC-DC boost converter 
• Solar panel Motor and 
• Motor controller

Why Tricycles?
There are many advantages in using tricycle :

• It is lighter than any vehicle around
• It can be used to carry more than one person
• There are pedals so dependence on electricity is not as much as motor bike.
• Enough space to place large battery.

 Related Video :



 Related Projects :

Mechanical engineering Projects
Physics Projects
Robotics Project
Electronics Projects
Electrical projects

PLC automatic Bottle Filling Machine

Importance of Bottle filling is realized by us when we see how many bottle we use in our daily life. Bottles are everywhere from cold drink to beer ,toilet cleaner to medicine etc etc.These bottle is filled with the help of filling machine without which it would have very difficult task. This project is about these machines.


This project is for both mechanical and electronics student because it has properties of both.
Related PDF and Docs :

Design of a Bottling Line Mechanism ( 4 MB )

Micro controller used in bottle filling plant(4.2 MB) 

Useful things to know : 
 
PLC : 
A programmable logic controller (PLC) or programmable controller is a digital computer used for automation of electromechanical processes, such as control of machinery on factory assembly lines, amusement rides, or light fixtures. PLCs are used in many industries and machines.

Related Video : 

 
Related Projects:
Mechanical engineering Projects
Physics Projects
Robotics Project
Electronics Projects
Electrical projects

Optical Character Recognition

What is OCR ?

Optical Character Recognition is a process of extracting text from images. You have noticed that whenever you scan text document ,you can't able to edit it with the help of text editor but with the help of OCR you can do it


This technology is very important not only for editing scanned documents but for the future of automatic cars.To make a automatic driven car , car should have capability to read instructions written on the street.Moreover, this technology is used by search engines to read what is written on images.

Even though, many believes that it is a solved problem, I don't agree with them.You would not agree with them either after using some OCR software because they still not giving perfect result.  


Related PDF :

Learning on the fly: a font-free approach toward multilingual OCR
Document Specific Modelling

Source Codes :

OCRopus : Open Source OCR Project sponsored by google

OCR code in MATLAB

Python :

gImageReader : A graphical GTK frontend to tesseract-ocr

Related Posts :

Computer Science Final Year Project Ideas 
Electronics Project
Java Project Ideas

Python Projects
Php Project

Iphone Applications

C++ Projects

How to answers Projects

Design of single phase induction motor drive

An induction motor or asynchronous motor is a type of alternating current motor where power is supplied to the rotor by means of electromagnetic induction. When I was searching for this project, I found report of Wisconsin University students on Design consideration for single phase induction motor with complete details and analysis.


This project idea is for students of Electrical and Electronics engineering.I think this project is popular among ECE students.Moreover,  I received mail regarding more information about this topic.University of Illinois students has worked on Low Cost Single Phase Powered Induction Machine Drive for Residential Applications to construct cost competitive with traditional single phase induction machine solutions while improving system performance.Other Student of UW-Madison Jianming Yao worked on Adjustable Speed Control Using DSP and Microcontroller.

Related Video:

Induction motor single phased

Related Projects :

Electronics Project Ideas

Anti Collision Mechanism

To implement this project we will need RFID(Radio Frequency Identification) using which we can label product with information.It is basically a wireless non contact system that uses radio frequency electromagnetic fields to transfer data. Owner of that information can access that information without having direct contact with that particular product.

What is the use of RFID ?
When implemented successfully each item in inventory carries its information on itself and make automation extremely easier. As we saw in Pranav Sixth sense technology about its possibility and uses when every item tells about its price, reviews and other useful information.

So what's the problem?

This system works great when used with only one information spreading tag in the environment but when multiple product reflect and modulate incoming signals.

How it works?

It works in two steps, in first step we will perform modulation between  High frequency Pseudo random sequence with Data Sequence to get high frequency data sequence and in second step we will modulate Incoming waveform with Pseudo random sequence to get original data.

Step 1.) Pseudorandom Sequence + Data Sequence ----> Resultant Output

Step 2.) Resultant Output + Pseudo random (High Frequency) -----> Original Data

Uses:
Automation of Inventory
Toll Tax Collection
Improved shopping experience
Information about Car Owner

Related PDF :

RFID Anti-Collision System Using the Spread Spectrum Technique
Implementation of an Anti-Collision Differential-Offset Spread Spectrum RFID System
Anti Collision Protocol

Related Video :

Related Projects :

Electronics Projects
Electrical projects

Wireless power delivery

Towards more efficient wireless power delivery 

What wiki says about Wireless Power

How wireless power works ?


Related PDF :

Optimal Frequency for Wireless Power Transmission into Dispersive Tissue

Wireless information and power transfer

Remote Power Delivery and signal amplification for MEMS Application

Related Video :



Wireless Charging


Similar Project:

Wireless sensor networks

What wiki says about wireless sensors?

Mobicom Tutorial on this topic

Architecture of Sensor Networks

Related PDF :

University of Texas WSN Chapter

Principles and Applications 

System Architecture for Wireless sensor Networks 

Wireless Sensor Network Security

Presentation :

WSN

Related Video :
Future of Wireless Networks



Related Projects:
Electronics Projects

Build Electric Two Wheeler Bike

Electric bikes are common nowadays, and you can find many of them moving around.I am discussing this project here to give you glimpse about working of electric bike and also how we can build one for us.


Aim:

To build efficient and cost effective bike.

Concept:

As its name suggest, electric two wheeler is powered by electricity which can be supplied by Lithium ion Battery. To charge this battery we will use three different methods, first is regenerative braking and second one is solar power and third is our traditional wall charging.

Components:

Battery:- We will select Lithium ion battery because it is light weight and compact.Moreover. it  has high energy density.

DC-DC Boost Converter
Solar Panel
Motor
Motor Controller : It helps us to regulate the amount of power applied to the motor, especially for DC motors.It is adjusted to synchronize with brush less motor.One key feature that is integrated with the interface of the controller and the motor was the regenerative braking.

Useful Links:

What is Battery Electric Vehicle ?

Electric Vehicle Conversion

How to Build your own Electric Bike ?

Eric Peltzer's Electric Bike Project

Build 72V electric motorcycle

Build yourself an electric bike

Related PDF :

Electric Bikes

Related Video:

Related Projects :
Mechanical Engineering Projects

Image Processing Projects

What is Image Processing ?

Image processing is similar to signal processing where we interpret images as two dimensional signal and apply standard techniques of signal processing.


Why we need it?

It is very helpful in modern research where we need to work on complex experimental or scientific data which includes micro array data in genetic research, or real-time multiasset portfolio trading in finance.With improvement in computer power we can do much work in digital way instead of using traditional analog methods.

Before doing anything related to this subject, first you should know about image,

So, What is an Image?

It is two dimensional representation on screen which is also known as pixel representation where each pixel contains special information about image.So when we get image, it is broken into grid of pixels for digital processing.

Image can be represented in two ways:

Vector(Used in CAD)
Bitmap(Used in complex designs)

Uses:

Fingerprint retrieval
Industrial inspection

Utah University Projects 

Stanford University Digital Image Processing including final year

Student Matlab Projects

Finding comets in sun observation images from the SOHO 


Material of undergraduate and graduate coursework