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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/