This was the Fall 2018 project for the first of the two senior design classes (ME366J and K) that mechanical engineering students in the Cockrell school must take. The Fall 2018 project was to create a semi-autonomous shopping cart that would follow the user around without the user interacting with the cart using their hands. This would enable users more flexibility while shopping and enable them to use their hands for other tasks like holding a cellphone or pushing a stroller around. This particular example was donated to the space and was built within itour studios and then donated back. The project was supervised by Dr. Carolyn Seepersad and created by Nicholas Fuselier, Amber Chen, Samuel Bar, Daniel Pousset, John McAnnally, and Emanuel Okeke.
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Shot by Obinna Akahara
Narrated by Emily Cazes
Cart operation relies on a Pixy 2 for target recognition and discrimination as well as four SRF05 ultrasonic sensors for dynamic obstacle avoidance. A Particle Photon is the microcontroller used to integrate data from the sensors. The Pixy relies on hue data from its video feed to construct color blocks from the scene. Insert Pixy Screenshot The Pixy is a smart sensor because it integrates the data onboard and relays the result; this is desirable because that means that the microcontroller is free to perform other tasks. The reason why the Pixy is able to process video feed live is because it uses only color data and does not try to discriminate more complex visual artifacts like edges or other phyical features. Specific hues can be tagged and when these are found adjacently in color connected components the Pixy can detect this and relay the height, width, and relative location to the microcontroller. In a commercial setting each user would wear a unique color code in the form of a belt or armband so that they could be tracked. The primary downside of this method is that the Pixy is sensitive to lighting - we found that bright, matte colors worked best but reflectors as used in bikes or self-illumination codes could also be used more reliably.
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