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Automatic Information Collector

Group 7

Making a cleaner world

Jordi Orriols

Marc Mayans

Jordi Crespo

Mónica Manzanera

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Index 1. Executive summary ..................................................................................................................... 3

2. Key aspects .................................................................................................................................. 4

2.1 What problem do we solved? ............................................................................................. 4

2.2 Who are our customers? ..................................................................................................... 4

2.3 Product description ............................................................................................................. 5

3. Context ...................................................................................................................................... 10

3.1 Competition analysis ......................................................................................................... 10

3.2 SWOT ................................................................................................................................. 11

4. References ................................................................................................................................. 13

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1. Executive summary

Gradually the cities are evolving towards more technological cities named SmartCities. The

SmartCities are an emerging concept that refers to a type of urban development based on

sustainability. This development is able to adequately respond to the basic needs of

institutions, businesses and citizens themselves both economically and operational, social

and environmental aspects.[1]

The Smartcities based on efficient infrastructure for electricity, telecommunications, gas,

transportation, emergency services, security, public facilities, etc ... should aim at

improving the comfort of citizens, becoming more efficient and provided new services

quality while respecting the maximum environmental aspects and making prudent use of

nonrenewable natural resources.

Our project is aimed at the improvement of public facilities in order to create intelligent

route containers to optimize resources and public services.

The aim is to create a model that simulates the collection of data on the capacity of

dumpsters both districts and large cities in order to optimize the route for waste

collection while still being able to obtain information and statistics to improve the quality

of the inhabitants.

There is still much to discover and advance in the world of Internet of Things and it is

expected that this world will break even in the coming years. That is why short term we

want to implement the model simulation of actual waste in containers in small towns so

that through a prototype application can know what contenders are more or less empty.

In the long term, we want to improve the implementation and make it scalable to reach

larger cities and therefore more users. In turn able to connect through Twitter to inform

users in real-time status of the containers.

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2. Key aspects

2.1 What problem do we solved?

Each inhabitant of the European Union generates, on average, 1.8 tons of waste per year, and its management is one of the main problems facing administrations. In addition, it is an aspect that will still take more important in the coming years because of the world population will reach in 2050 9.5 million people, which over 70% will be concentrated in large cities. Within this paradigm, aspects as a good source separation of waste and more efficient land use become major issues when planning urban management. [2]

By collecting and analyzing data from refuse containers across the world, we will be able to create efficiencies and cut the cost of waste collection.

Until now, collecting waste has been done using fixed routes and schedules that require a

lot of manual planning. Containers are collected on a set schedule whether they are full or

not. This causes unnecessary costs, poor equipment utilization, wear and tear on the

roads and excessive emissions.

2.2 Who are our customers?

Our target audience directly are the municipalities. By implementing a route optimization

system, we would focus the application to this sector by offering an easy and intuitive

application for officials. It may visualize the route they should do depending on the

amount of waste deposited in containers located in the city.

On the other hand, indirectly, our end customers will be the inhabitants of the city. We

will provide a public service to improve the use of resources. For them, the application

would focus in a more informative way. It may visualize what containers are empty to

make better use of public equipment.

Knowing who will be our customers, we can improve our system by adapting it to a way

that makes the application easy a secure to use. This is an important issue since to adapt

the system to the best way, it is very important to know who will be the end customer to

get that the implementation will meet their needs.

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2.3 Product description

Our team will plan a complete solution that automates the planning of waste collection

and optimizes routes. It uses ultrasonic sensors attached to Arduino UNO that remotely

measure the fill-level of waste containers and a cloud service to forecast when bins

become full and optimize the collection routes and schedules. The routes are then

delivered to the driver’s cellular, which guides him along the route.

We have also used XBee module that enables communication between the containers and

the unit that manages the application. The module located in the container act as a router

that is responsible for sending the information to a coordinator module responsible for

decoding the information and managing it to make it understandable to the end user.

It exist different technologies in the market and intelligent trashcans are becoming more and more popular:

Therefore, we thought that easily with the new arduinos and several sensors we will be

capable of creating such technology.

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With the Arduino sending the data, each plan is calculate by first

taking into account the fill-up forecasts for each individual

container and then taking into account collection constraints and

costs (e.g. fleet availability, road restrictions and traffic). The

system then calculates millions of different alternatives and

selects the most economically efficient collection plan for each

day. This calculus are made by our server and send it to the

waste company that takes care of the garbage collection in the

city or the town.

Our system bring us the opportunity to send alerts when abnormal events occur. These

alerts are visible in our web services but will also be send out as email. Alerts are send out

for following abnormal events:

● Overfull containers

● Partial collections

● Unscheduled collections (theft etc.)

● Movement (for example if the container has been moved out of the assigned area)

Current waste collection logistics is carry out by emptying containers according to

predefined schedules and routes, which are repeat at a set frequency.

The current waste collection system has much inefficiency:

● Time consuming. Trucks go and empty containers whether they are full or not.

● High costs.

● Greater traffic flow and congestion.

● Unnecessary fuel consumption.

● Increased noise and air pollution because of more trucks on the road.

Public Administrations and Urban Service Managers want to optimise the management of

this service to reduce infrastructure, operating and maintenance costs, as well as reduce

contamination directly associated with waste collection.[3]

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The benefits are:

-Increase Collection Efficiency through Route Optimization

-Receive automatically generated schedules and optimized routes.

-Access to the data captured by arduino to view and manage sites with any cellular

enabled tablet (iOS, Android, Windows).

-Guide your drivers along optimal routes using the Android app that features turn-by-turn

navigation and incident reporting.

-View all your information 24h 360/day via our easy-to-use cloud-based services both

from the back office as well as from any mobile location

-View estimated weights of each container you service and use this data more accurately

track diversion rates.

-Monitor container fill-levels, forecasted fill-up dates and vehicle tracking.

-The generation of big data for the municipalities

So in conclusion:

1. Saves Money

2. Reduces Litter

3. Increases Recycling

4. Conserves Fuel

5. Eliminates Waste Overflow

6. Frees Up Labor

7. Lowers Times

8. Keeps Out the Pests

9. Enhances & Modernizes Core Services

10. Smart city

We think that arduino brings us the opportunity to make this project real and

practical.

We have different kind of sensors that we can possibly use like:

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Ultrasonic sensor Pressure sensor

Infrared sensor

However, we think that the ultrasonic sensor will be the best for detecting the filling

level.

A robust ultrasonic sensor is installed in the waste container and detects the fill

level regardless of what has been deposited inside.

It automatically adapts to changing surfaces and different kinds of waste and the data

information are regularly transmitted to the cloud via the Arduino communications

systems and furthermore connected to the network.

Maintenance, service and diagnostics are also possible via the cloud, sensor data is

monitored online and fewer on-site services are needed. The sensor consumes very

little power, and we can possibly install a lithium battery so there is no need to be

plugged in the current. In addition, our system could be fed by itself through solar

panels.

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Regarding the application, this will be its use case diagram:

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3. Context

3.1 Competition analysis

We are not alone in this filed, some companies had already start developing their products like Smartbin:

They use intelligent Remote Monitoring with The small yet robust Ultrasonic Level Sensor (UBi) they claim to say that is the most reliable and widely deployed fill-level sensor in the world. A plug & play IoT device, the UBi reports near real time data to their platform where clients enjoy a war room view of operations, optimized routes are created, and detailed KPI reports inform business strategy.[4]

We can find another example like bigBelly.

BigBelly Solar smart bins are in over 1,500 cities and on college campuses like Northern Arizona University:

One of the biggest problem with trash collection is when you get an overflow -- it's a disaster," said Brian Phillips, executive vice president at BigBelly Solar.But biggy cans maximize the amount of trash they can hold (using compactors) and alert when pickup is necessary (with sensors and wi-fi inside the cans).[5]

Despite all the features offered by the competition, we differentiate ourselves in two key aspects. The first one is the way we deliver the circuit. It is delivered in a small box where inside it the integrated circuit is located. In addition, this box includes a solar panel that would allow the circuit to be fed by itself.

The second one is that we also offer a service of big data so that we can provide information to municipalities for instance about which hours are the most common to pull the trash away. Thus, the municipality could manage in a more efficient way available resources.

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3.2 SWOT

In this section, we are going to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of our

application, which demarcate the possible success of the application. The following

table show the weaknesses, strengths, threats and opportunities we have.

Strenghts Weakness

-Satisfaction of main need

-Sustainability

-First application

-Similiar products

-Need of investor

Opportunities Threats

-Lack of knowdelge of this kind of

applications by the user

-Interest in Mobile sector

-Pioneers in Spain

-New sector

-Active competence

We are going to explain in detail each of the points outlined in the table above.

Weaknesses

The main weakness is the low maturity of our company in this sector. We are a new

company and therefore we have no consumer confidence.

On the other hand, we are not a new product on the market and the reaction of this

new release would not have the same impact as if it were a revolutionary and

innovative application that is not now on the market.

We also found a weak dependence of an investor as it is difficult to find one that trust

on a new company on the market.

Threats

The main threat is the competition. This competition is very actively updating their

applications and offering new functionalities. They have a crowd consolidated and

therefore a major threat ahead to achieve our target audience.

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Strengths

As a strong, we believe that we satisfy the needs of consumers with an easy

application that also has limited functionality and without having to pay extra for any

function. We believe that this way we can attract people to our application and

therefore consider it a strength.

Opportunities

We consider an opportunity the ignorance to find applications of this kind. Therefore,

for all practical purposes, we are a new product on the market and we can get a large

number of users. To achieve this we should carry out a good advertising campaign to

reach our target audience.

We are in a very good geographical location to develop mobile applications with an

important investment during last year. This fact found such an opportunity as this

indicates interest in the sector and applications of our features.

Finally, after a market research we realized that any company have implemented a

similar product in our country so this could be a good opportunity to invest in us.

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4. References

[1] http://www.smartcityexpo.com/

[2] https://www.esmartcity.es/articulos/la-recogida-de-residuos-en-el-nuevo-paradigma-de-las-

smart-cities

[3 ]http://www.urbiotica.com/smartsolutions/intelligentwastemanagement/

[4] https://www.smartbin.com/

[5] http://money.cnn.com/gallery/technology/2014/11/11/innovative-city-tech/