Khuyen Vo, Verrazzano Class of 2022, completed major in Electrical Engineering and minor in Mathematics
In
modern society, there is a lot of waste flowing within and beneath the water's
surface. For many years, this waste has been damaging the marine life in these
areas and has accelerated climate change. Because of the increasing amount of
pollution in the water, the quality of the water has been deteriorating. The
goal of this project is to help remove garbage contaminating the water
surrounding numerous sites in the environment.
The
boat structure water sweeper prototype was designed using software such as
Canva and Solidworks. PVC pipes and connectors were used to make the base of the
sweeper. The brushless thrusters connecting with Electric Speed Controls (ESCs)
were used to move the boat properly. Lead acid batteries supplied power to the
boat. The transmitter and receiver circuits of the controller were built in the
lab by soldering the circuit components on the Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs).
C++ and machine learning codes were developed and compiled onto the Arduino IDE
to develop the two types of operations for the sweeper. A Husky Lens camera was
installed on the boat and trained to spot trashes by inserting a waste data
library. For the waterproof purpose, an acrylic box was developed to cover the
micro-controller as well as the transmitter circuit. The boat could be operated
by itself or remotely controlled by a user.
This
project allowed me to pursue my interests, to learn something new, to hone my
problem-solving skills and to challenge myself in new ways. Working on this project
gave me the opportunity to work closely with a mentor, and learned a lot from her.
If I
continued to develop this project further in the future, I would include more
features that could help to perfect this sweeper. The first feature would develop
sensors for water quality to let the operator know the quality of the water
before and after they collect the trash. I also want to add an underwater
camera and app for the robot, and use data analytics to understand the patterns
within the trash collected. Currently the sweeper uses batteries to operate so
in the future I would add solar panels to charge the sweeper and interconnecting
drones for the sweeper, and develop a route planning to make the boat travel
the least amount of distance to the trash.
Remote control for sweeper
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| Connection between motor thruster and receiver |
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| Base of sweeper |
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| Receiver of sweeper |
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