Assisted Home Storage

A P R O O F O F C O N C E P T F O R A U T O M A T E D S O L U T I O N S I N T H E H O M E

ASSISTED HOME STORAGE

ORIGINAL CONCEPT

• Scaling down existing technology for warehouse management for use in the household• Initial Prototype: home

refrigerators

CONCEPTION: THE FUTURE OF HOME REFRIGERATION

ORIGINAL STORAGE CONCEPT

• An internal robotic cycle of shelves• Inventory fully

managed by software• Retrieval and storage

are completely robotized

THE RUBE GOLDBERG SOLUTION

Complicated!

Now with more moving parts!

Long Lead Time

DEPARTURES FROM INITIAL DESIGN

• Changes in Design

• Technical Challenges

• Lack of Expertise

Eureka?!

FATAL FLAW(S)

• Motor synchronicity• No prior robotics

experience• Lack of facilities for

development of hardware• Only opportunity for

construction was at personal residences

REDESIGN

• Solves issues with motor synchronicity (single motor)• Easy to control via

USB (see software)• Aesthetically

pleasing

PHYSICAL CONSTRUCTION

GEARBOX AND MOTOR

MOTION AND POSITION SENSING

• Momentary switch is activated when set portions of the turntable go by

• Arduino sends a signal back to computer when switch is activated

• Character literal ‘g’ starts the motor

• Character literal ‘s’ stops the motor

• https://www.dropbox.com/s/n0l5skpb5pzmzdw/VIDEO0006.mp4

Momentary Contact Switch – wired as floating when open or short to ground

INVENTORY ENTRY AND MANAGEMENT

• Entry of items by barcode

• Initially considered image processing approach• Too complex

• UI program receives input from barcode scanner for food storage, which is managed in a database

MOTOR CONTROL

• Uses Arduino Uno board for motor control

• The Arduino waits for a ‘g’ to be sent to start the motor and an ‘s’ to stop

• Controls ESC via PWM signal through pin 9• Certain PWM signal

arms the ESC• Anything above the

activation signal starts the motor

USER INTERFACE

• UI was coded in C++ in Visual Studio 2010

• Consists of 8 screens which allow a user to enter and retrieve an item

• Each screen contains buttons and some have a text box for the user to enter information

DATA STORAGE

• All items stored, have 3 attributes• Name, Type, and Expiration date

• All items get stored in a text file, named data.txt, in the format:• ItemName ItemType ExpirationDate

• Each itemName also gets stored in an Vector List to quickly determine stored items

• The barcode scanner will read the barcode and send a string of numbers that correspond to the item. The program will then read from a text file, named barcode.txt, and determine which item has been scanned

SOFTWARE DEMO