Economic Impact
Cost:
To start this project, the money will be spent on the whole system. Which need
drones which the number fit with area of the place that will run this system. And a base
is needed for storage and charge the drones and a place for the garbage to place. or the
maintenance price, the main costs will be the fee that used to charge the drone and the
fee for some repair job that may need to do with the drone.
Revenue :
The revenue is constituted by several parts. The first part is the selling of
specialized trash cans, as only our trash cans can be used in the system we design to
stop precisely and give the bags to the car. The second part is the selling of trash cars,
same as the trash cans; the consumers need our trash cars to use our system. The third
part is the route planning. If a campus wants to use our system, we can help them to
planning the route in order to minimize the cost and save more energy. The forth part is
the after sale service. For instance, repairing broken trash cans or trash cars, updating
software that controlled the system, and updating the route planning if anything in the
campus change. If possible, with the influence of our trash system, we can expand our
service to trash recycling or other areas that related to trash in the campus.
Social Impact：
A major social impact that was considered during the designing of our vehicle was
the possibility of janitorial positions being lost at the university. The concept of our
vehicle hinges entirely on trash removal, so it is possible that there would be no
employment loss as the staff could simply be allocated to different tasks, however, it
was merely stated as a possibility. This impact would be very negative if someone were
to lose their job, but positive if they were simply assigned different tasks, as the
efficiency would see an overall increase.
In addition to this, the aspect of the autonomous vehicle being physically present
in the roadways poses a social impact. The vehicle will be making regular stops to
collect trash from specific trash cans, and this could be found annoying by the other
drivers in the road. Additionally, pedestrians near the vehicle would have to be attentive
to the trash unloading process so they don’t get injured. The traffic aspect can be
mitigated when considering that COTA and other buses regularly make frequent stops
in the busy roads as it is. Also, the trash unloading process is not inherently dangerous
as long as pedestrians aren’t intentionally disturbing it. Overall, the social impact of
implementing out vehicle system is relatively low when all aspects are considered. This
is beneficial to our team in the long run, as the campus would not have to adapt to any
significant changes in order to utilize the system.
Here is our Future Plan!