Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
46 Cat Selective Automated Food Dispenser
Advika Battini
Ali Yaqoob
Vibhu Vanjari
Yuchen He TA design_document0.pdf
final_paper0.pdf
presentation0.pptx
proposal0.pdf
Problem:
People with two or more cats often have one cat eating way too much food leaving the other pet starved. The chubby cat tends to eat all the food before the other one gets to it. It is also tedious to control how much food each cat gets.

Solution and features:
We aim to solve these problems by designing an automated system which controls how much food is given to each cat. The system stops the cats from eating each others food and controls how much food and at what time the cats are being fed.

Dispenser:
A desired quantity (weight) for food can be entered. The dispenser, will have a flap door that opens/closes based on feedback from a weight sensor placed under the area/bowl the food is dispensed. Times the food is dispensed when a cat approaches can also be controlled to control when the cat eats.
The food container will have IR sensors/LEDs to indicate to the person if the level of food.

Cat Detector:
Methods to detect which cat is approaching:
RFID detection: most existing dispensers / gates use RFID concerned about IP
Cat collar color detection: The part of the collar on the cats back will be distinctly colored and will be detected by a downward facing camera.The camera will take a picture as the cat approaches the device. A motion sensor can be used to activate the camera.
A sliding door to close the access to the food bowl if the wrong cat tries to eat the food.

All the above functionality can additionally be controlled by the owner of the cats using an attached screen.

Power Considerations:
The device will be powered through the wall socket and we will implement a voltage regulator to appropriately power our PCB.

Amphibious Spherical Explorer

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The amphibious spherical explorer (ASE) is a spherical robot for home monitoring, outdoor adventure or hazardous environment surveillance. Due to the unique shape of the robot, ASE can travel across land, dessert, swamp or even water by itself, or be casted by other devices (e.g. slingshot) to the mission area. ASE has a motion-sensing system based on Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and rotary magnetic encoder, which allows the internal controller to adjust its speed and attitude properly. The well-designed control system makes the robot free of visible wobbliness when it is taking actions like acceleration, deceleration, turning and rest. ASE is also a platform for research on control system design. The parameters of the internal controller can be assigned by an external control panel in computer based on MATLAB Graphic User Interface (GUI) which communicates with the robot via a WiFi network generated by the robot. The response of the robot can be recorded and sent back to the control panel for further analysis. This project is completely open-sourced. People who are interested in the robot can continue this project for more interesting features, such as adding camera for real-time surveillance, or controller design based on machine learning.

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