INDIAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Garbage collector robot

Muhammad Abbas Khan1 ∗ , Dr.Muhammad Zubair Khan2 , Hammad Khan1 ,

Muhammad Hanzla1 , Muhammad Jamal1 , Taimoor Khalid1 , Naqeeb Ullah1
OPEN ACCESS
1 Department of Electrical Engineering, FICT, BUITEMS, Quetta, Pakistan
Received: 09-04-2020
2 Department of Mathematical Sciences, FABS, BUITEMS, Quetta, Pakistan
Accepted: 29-04-2020
Published: 19-06-2020

Editor: Dr. Natarajan Gajendran

Abstract
Citation: Khan MA, Khan DMZ,
Aim/Objectives: The primary aim is to introduce a way in which garbage
Khan H, Hanzla M, Jamal M, Khalid T, could be collected and disposed efficiently; To analyze the problem of garbage
Ullah N (2020) Garbage collector disposal at a school, restaurant, office, hotel, production plant or any other
robot. Indian Journal of Science and
Technology 13(20): 2065-2070. https suitable location; To design and develop a system for solving the problem; To
://doi.org/10.17485/IJST/v13i20.212 test and maintain the implemented system. Method: Our project is divided
∗ Corresponding author. into two main parts. We are designing a system that collects garbage automat-
Muhammad Abbas Khan ically through line. For which we are designing an arena so that the machine
Department of Electrical will follow the specific path and also manually by using Arduino and Bluetooth
Engineering, FICT, BUITEMS, Quetta,
Pakistan
module. The machine can be controlled by software which will give command
[email protected] to the robotic jaw to collect the stationary waste. It also has the character-
Funding: None
istic to get controlled by voice command which makes the robot to collect
the garbage according to the given command. Findings: We have designed a
Competing Interests: None
semi-autonomous garbage collector robot which can do multiple functions.
Copyright: © 2020 Khan, Khan,
This robot has one robotic arm in which it can pick the garbage and dispense
Khan, Hanzla, Jamal, Khalid, Ullah.
This is an open access article it in main basket attached to the robot. The camera placed on robot helps
distributed under the terms of the the administrator to remotely monitor the robot while collecting garbage. The
Creative Commons Attribution
prototype has an electronic mechanism by which the robot can dispense it
License, which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction collected garbage to the dispensing point. This robot has installed batteries in
in any medium, provided the which there is no fuel or electricity required to complete the operation.
original author and source are
credited.
Keywords: Robot; garbage collector bins; automatic waste disposal; Pakistan
Published By Indian Society for
Education and Environment (iSee)

1 Introduction
Waste management is the big issue globally and it needs serious attention. There
is no proper management of waste and garbage in rural and urban area in Pak-
istan, which may cause threat to health security, hygiene, human safety and
wild life safety. Presently the manual garbage collection system exists in most
places, where human intervention is involved. Manual garbage collection and
waste management is the good source to generate employment but there are
some issues associated with it, like some time there is unavailability of manual

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labor for days such as in maintaining railway tracks. There is a big concern of human safety when harmful gases
exist.
The autonomous or semi-autonomous garbage collection unit may have high manufacturing cost but less main-
tenance cost. Autonomous bots can be a far better option when it comes to abolishing the monotony of tasks, over-
coming safety issues during manual labor and in reaching remote areas. In some cases, efficiency may also be better
(1 robot can do the work of several men). The only drawback is that the production costs of the robots are high.
Our aim is to substantially reduce the cost, so as to make the implementation on a large scale feasible, including
implementation through government bodies (1) .
In order to understand the need for a compact, cost effective and scalable system, and before diving in to provide
our own solution, we need to first understand the existing research and work done in the field. There have been
numerous prototypes of garbage collection systems, autonomous robots, and waste segregators. In this section, we
depict a concise review performed on these existing pieces of work, encompassing mobile robots, garbage collectors
and IoT based systems for similar use cases. In proposed a Garbage collection Robot on the beach using wireless com-
munications. The primary objective of this research was to clean up waste materials on coastline beaches. The mobile
robot system consists of a shovel to scoop up waste, a trash box to deposit the waste gathered, a solar cell(which can
help use an alternate source of power), an IP Camera to relay live feed to the user and a Bluetooth module for wireless
communication (2) . The controller used is a basic PIC Microcontroller, along with a LED Display. The UI and the
robot controller are designed on Visual Basic. Motion is completely controlled by the user (not autonomous), with
buttons being made for COM port connection, the four translational directions, as well as the vertical motion of
the tray. It can pick up wastes big in size like plastic bottles, packets, etc. The robot is equipped with tank wheels,
which make it suitable for use not only in the beach terrain, but also in other harsh environments. It is a manual,
eco-friendly and cheap option (3) .
In (4) presented a deep learning-based approach to waste collection. The system consists of a 5- DoF manipulator,
a web camera, IMU, Odometer, GPS module, Ultrasonic rangefinder, and a garbage container. The terrains suitable
for such application are plain grounds, lawns and parks. The working is split into localization, navigation and per-
ception. Localization deals with determining the position and orientation of the robot relative to a reference frame.
A regenerated map of the cleaning area is generated for localization and navigation. The navigation module is for
path planning and obstacle avoiding. Using the pre-fed environment map, the robot must find an optimal, obstacle
avoiding path to pick up all the garbage lying around within the confines of the local map. Perception deals with
garbage classification and localization. Image recognition includes ground segmentation, contour extraction, object
tracking, and then classification. The neural network used here is CNN. Once identified, the robot will translate such
that the image is kept in one particular part of the image continually, and the arm will then take over and pick up
the object at a certain distance if it is classified as waste. Robot moves under PID algorithm. If out of range, tries to
come back in range. Good accuracy obtained, most for bottles (91.87%), least for waste papers (77.7%).
In (5) proposed a robot based indoor autonomous trash detection algorithm using Ultrasonic Sensors. The idea
here was to eliminate the heavy image processing algorithms for waste classification. The object shape has been
scanned by 2 horizontally moving ultrasonic sensors placed one on top of the other. The ultrasonic sensors map the
dimension of the object by being mounted on a servo base which rotates horizontally. The upper ultrasonic sensor
confirms the object size and decides whether it is a waste or not. It then moves towards the trash and picks it up using
an arm. The robot also comes equipped with a trash bin. It differentiates between walls/furniture and trash based on
object width as scanned by the lower ultrasonic sensor. Here, waste classification simply based on width and height
of object. Cheap option, complexity saved, but accuracy compromised. Work has also been done in creating a house
cleaning robot system using path indication and position estimation using a ceiling camera. The idea presented here
is that the user should be allowed to select which zone he wants cleaned. The user selects that on his/her computer
screen from an image taken by a web camera attached to the ceiling of the room. When he/she clicks the zone that
need to be cleaned, the points clicked on the image have to be manually mapped to coordinates in the room, and
this movement coordinate data is fed as an instruction to the robot. To detect the position, a LED mounted on the

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robot is tracked by the camera. The desired application area here is homes, and other cramped places where sensor
data might not be completely reliable. Odometer errors are neutralized by camera pre-determined optimal path
calculations. This concept saves a lot of time, but isn’t completely automated, and requires some degree of human
intervention. This method is tough to implement when robot goes out of camera frame.
In (6) demonstrates the use of a different algorithm. The robot (Khepra robot with 2 wheels and a gripper) was
first trained in simulation to learn what it must go using the evolutionary process, and then the final generation was
deployed onto the hardware board. Each task of the robot (for example identifying waste, picking up waste, dumping
waste, etc.) was assigned a fitness level or score. The algorithm parameters adjusted themselves to maximise the score
as the generations (iterations) progressed. Sensor readings (8 IRs) were used to take inputs from the environment
and study the interactions of the robot. Block diagram ( Figure 1) shows the complete overview of project.

Fig 1. Block diagram of project

2 Implementation Method
The project is based on the low-cost solution; the system is completely user-friendly. The project consists of two main
parts in which one is voice controlled and the other is semi-autonomous like button control.
We have used one Bluetooth module for wireless link between the robot and mobile. The mobile generates the
voice command and send to the Arduino microcontroller via Bluetooth and microcontroller read the command and
perform respective action. There is one robotic hand placed on robot which will pick the garbage and dispense it in
the basket which is placed on robot.
The robot has two DC gear motors which specifications are as below:
Voltage = 24V maximum
Current at no load = 300mA
Current at full load = 1.2A
RPM without gear Box = 2800
RPM with gear box = 200 @ 24V
These gear motors are placed in a differential drive in both rear wheels. These motors mainly drive the robot. The

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servo motors are used in robotic hand which move the robotic hand in 4 degree of freedom.
We have used Arduino based microcontroller in this project in which it has 14 digital pins and 6 analog pins.
Arduino UNO has a microcontroller of ATMEL Family ATMEGA328 having instruction execution time is one
machine cycle per instruction. The motor driver which we have used is L298N, L298N has two built in motor driver
in one chip. To increase the current, we have connected two drivers parallel because our motor driver current con-
sumption is more and one motor driver does not handle these motors properly. The schematic diagram of motor
driver interfacing with Arduino is shown in Figure 2.

Fig 2. Schematic of Robot circuit

Figure 2 shows the schematic of motor driver circuit in which we have connected two motor drivers in parallel
to increase the current, this driver can handle the current of 3A easily at 12V which id our requirement. The motor
driver pin 1,8 and 15 is connected to ground to disable the current sensing capability because we no more required
this pin. The Vs pin is connected to 12V of battery which will provide the power to motors.
The Bluetooth module is used for wireless communication and this link is of short range having a range of 25
meters. Wireless link is required to establish the connection between the mobile application and the robot. The
microcontroller requires 5V for proper operation and above 5V it got damaged. So we have used one buck converter
to convert 12V to 5V for microcontroller operation. (7,8)

2.1 Flow diagram

The flow diagram ( Figure 3) explains the basic algorithm of project in which the programming code of project is
based. This robot has one jaw mechanism for pick and place and two motors which are used for x and y direction
movement. The x direction motor is used to place the garbage in respective basket and the y-axis motor is used to
adjust the jaw height.

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Fig 3. Flow chart of project

3 Result and Discussion

The simulation of project is completed on proteus software and then we have tested the hardware. The hardware is
based on Arduino board. First of all, we have tested the DC gear motors with the respective motor driver circuit. The
Arduino will provide the logic signal to the motor driver to turn ON and OFF. The commands are listed in Table 1

Table 1. Commands of basic operation of robot

SR. No Command M1a M1b M2a M2b
1 Forwards ON OFF ON OFF
2 Backward OFF ON OFF ON
3 Left ON OFF OFF OFF
4 Right OFF OFF ON OFF
5 Stop OFF OFF OFF OFF
6

The Table 1 shows the basic operation of robot in which two motors will drive the robot in forward as well as
reverse direction.

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4 Conclusion
We have designed a semi-autonomous garbage collector robot which can do multiple functions. The basic reason of
completion of this task is to implement a well-organized way of garbage compilation and to trim down the production
cost. Intelligently handling garbage waste can help for clean environment of Pakistan and to reduce environment
pollution which is seriously felt in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic situation.

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