ECE.05R
Team Members Heading link
- Jason Astorga
- Erick Calixto
- Juan Garcia
- Michael Snater
Project Description Heading link
The garbage collection industry is in desperate need of operating cost reductions due to frequent yet preventable accidents. According to Trucking Watch, 2017 saw 107 fatal truck accidents and over 1,400 related accidents. One such accident involves collection trucks striking low-hanging cables and causing significant damage to nearby utilities. We seek to address this issue at the request of Lakeshore Recycling Systems (LRS) with a device that can be easily integrated into the trucks and detect cables and clearance height, providing audible cues when an accident is bound to occur. To achieve this, our embedded system performs sensing, data processing, and data visualization. Its main operation is height calculation, which utilizes an accelerometer and distance detection sensors. In our experiments, we demonstrate proper identification of obstructions and provide subsequent feedback to ensure operators are able to take appropriate actions to avoid collisions. We are able to capture the height of stationary cables at various distances up to 21 ft with 90 % accuracy. We visit alleyways in the City of Chicago to perform these experiments, showcasing our device’s robust performance in one of the most confining and congested environments in the country due to there being over 1,900 miles of alleyways in Chicago according to the Lakota group more than any other city in the US.