Fabrication of Functional Smart Trash Bin

While collecting garbage, a frequent encounter issue is over-spilling and non-uniform collection of waste. Additionally, with the ordinary bins, people come in contact with them either while opening it or closing it in order to put their waste in, which might lead to transmission of microbes or viruses. Therefore, the primary objective of the present work was to fabricate a working smart trash bin that has the capability of detecting the trash level, opening and closing its lid and transporting itself without any human intervention. The bin was fitted with sensors, motors and microcontroller equipped with Arduino. The fabricated smart trash bin was able to detect the presence of the user, level of trash and automatically decide if the lid needs to open or should remain close. Additionally, once the bin was full, the controller generated a signal to move the bin from its initial position to a place where it was out of use so that the user will not be able to throw the trash into the bin anymore. Future possibilities of this project would firstly be to have larger capacity trash bins. Secondly, having a network were the bins can communicate with the collectors to ensure efficient trash collection at the municipal level.