The design we chose to develop, autonomous trash-cars, gives a good effort to please all the end-user feedback data we collected from our earlier interviews. The biggest problem users had on campus with overflowing trashcans is that the garbage would sit around for hours which would make trash blow out into the rest of the campus. With our design, the trashcan automatically bags the trash to prevent overflow and the autonomous trash minicar comes to retrieve it once it is signaled to do so. In the possible solution, we had with trash air drones, users were worried about trash potentially falling from the sky if a mistake were to happen. With our design the autonomous minicar is on land so there isn’t a potential for falling trash. Another potential worry was that in our previous solution of air drones was that they would be very expensive, which is true. Going with land minicars is a cheaper route with a lot of the same benefits as the air drone.
Figure 1. Campus Area System Borders
Lastly, the main concern was the reliability of our autonomous solution. Our solution is also designed to be dispatched from a central hub which is shown on our map, indicated by the purple building (Figure 1). From the hub, the autonomous minicars will be sent to pick up any trash from any signaling smart trash cans on campus. Since the hub is centralized and the route is set for the most efficient path before dispatch, it will make clean up quick and reliable.