First Place Design Category
Students: Antonio Pugliese, Michael Waltman, Garrett Walsh
Advisor: Dr. Mizanoor Rahman
This project focuses on designing and developing a sensor-based game to promote recycling aluminum cans. The main motivation for this project is environmental health; this project looks to reduce the number of aluminum cans that end up in public waste bins and have them thrown in the recycling bin instead. This will be achieved by providing a fun and competitive experience to people with the device designed in this project.
The first of two components is a can-crushing device purchased from the market. With this simple device, the user places an aluminum can on a platform and pulls a lever to crush the can into a disk. The second component is a pegboard inspired by the game “Plinko” seen on “The Price is Right” game show. The crushed can will act as the disk and will fall down the board through one of six scoring slots into the recycling bin. This game utilizes gravity, infrared sensors, and an LCD display screen in tandem with an Arduino microcontroller so once the can is crushed, this process becomes hands-free.
This experience will provide fun sights, a satisfying experience for a user when recycling cans, and even encourage this through friendly competition when two or more friends have cans to recycle. It may even encourage someone to save their can when no recycling bins are available so they can use it to play the game, which would save even more cans from a landfill, increasing awareness for environmental health in the long run.