LPU Students Develop a Vehicle Controller For Waste Collection With Geo Mapping Capability

A team of student researchers from Lovely Professional University, India’s largest private university, have developed a vehicle controller for automatic waste collection in a controlled environment such as universities, government organisations and public places. The vehicle controller is equipped with a geo-mapping feature capable of mapping the location of the bins and also monitoring the garbage levels of the bins to prevent waste overflow. The entire system will cost approx. Rs. 30,000 when ready for production (costs can depending upon the size of the premises and controllers needed).

Generally, such systems are dependent on internet access to perform their jobs, however, the vehicle controller unit is able to communicate with the bins without the internet as it is embedded with offline geo-mapping. It can receive requests from the bins through RF and reach the destination of the bin for collecting the waste. The unit can be easily trained to chart a path in a controlled environment so that the vehicle reaches the destination of the bins safely. The team behind this innovation includes Prabin Kumar Das, a B Tech student (Electronics Communication and Engineering) and Shaik Vaseem Akram, a PhD scholar at Lovely Professional University. The guidance for the project has been provided by Dr Lovi Raj Gupta, Dr Anita Gehlot, Dr Rajesh Singh and Paramveer Kang.

The designed system uses an architecture of Wireless Sensor Networks along with the (IoT) Internet of Things for effective data acquisition and analysis. It uses an RF (radio frequency) based network which eliminates the dependency of the internet thereby allowing it to function offline. The research team has developed a prototype and has conducted testing within the university premises. Furthermore, the team is all set to conduct external pilot testing with industry players.