Engage & Persist

Collaborate

Giving & Receiving Feedback

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Coding

Our project was EcoSorter in which we created an AI algorithm to detect plastic bags on recycling sorting facility conveyor belts. A robotic arm at the end grabs any plastic bags that were not sorted out by hand from the workers previously. In recycling sorting facilities, the recycling goes through a preliminary search in which workers manually sort trash out by hand. Then, the recycling goes through a complex system where it is sorted into different materials. If trash is not taken out, specifically plastic bags, rope, and clothing, it can easily get stuck in the machinery and workers have to pull it out which can be dangerous. We made a system with a camera above the conveyor belt that puts a video feed through the AI. The AI then recognizes any plastic bags and gets the coordinates to send a command to the robotic arm about when it will reach the end. The arm grabs the bag and lifts it into the air where it gets sucked up by vacuums that are already in recycling facilities. This would aid workers and make their jobs easier but would not have a risk of taking any jobs away.

Throughout this studio and while working on the project, a consistent goal of mine was to learn applications of Artificial Intelligence and gain an understanding of how it works and processes data. I accomplished these goals because, in the first part of the studio, I learned a lot about programs like Teachable Machine and Orange. When I worked on my project I applied that and I saw the process of training and AI and how that works. I gathered a lot of data from both taking videos and photoshopping images with different backgrounds which I then annotated for it to be trained. I learned how to do some coding in Python which I had never done before. I created an else/if code that produced an output based on input and one based on data from spreadsheets. When working on the project, I grew in my collaboration skills because we had to troubleshoot a lot of things and work together to finish our project in a limited time. I helped our group with time management and making sure we were on track to finish the project. I contributed to the building of the conveyor belt which I worked on for a while and it was one of the elements of the project that functioned well. At the end of the project, I summed up the work we did and created our final presentation which was detailed and taught the audience what we did.