Published by : International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
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Vol. 9 Issue 07, July-2020
Swachh Hasth-A Water Cleaning Robot
Siddhanna Janai , H N Supreetha , Bhoomika S , Yogithashree R P, Pallavi M
Maharaja Institute of Technology Mysore
Abstract:- Water acts as a great essential life source. It is a well- other marine organisms. To address the issues mentioned
known fact that life began with water and the water cleanliness above, the project proposed in this article aims to develop a
is a very important aspect of life to survive on earth. But, the water boat with a robotic arm that can detect, pick, and place
byproducts of science laid their monstrous footsteps as garbage from water-bodies and thereby clean the water-
pollutants. Most of these pollutants are toxic and are affecting
adversely the water resources (wells, lakes, rivers, and sea),
bodies.
living organisms in the water, and all dependent organisms.
Also, due to the carelessness in the use & maintenance of water II. LITERATURE REVIEW:
bodies, millions of tons of plastics and other floating wastes are This Section describes the previous works on the water
dumped into the water daily. Most of the time, the water bodies cleaning boats based on different technologies designed by
are cleaned manually with human labor which requires a lot of other researchers around the world.
time and cost. To address this, the proposed work in this article
aims at the design and development of an Arduino-Uno Chen Su, et al. [5] described “An Autonomous ship for
controlled surface water trash cleaning semi-autonomous boat cleaning the garbage floating on a lake”. The structure and
with a robotic arm. This work is simulated using the open-
source simulation tool TINKERCAD. Simulation results have
principle of an autonomous ship for cleaning the garbage
shown that the proposed work would be an alternative for floating on the lake has been proposed in the article. The ship
surface water trash collection and maintenance of cleanliness was programmed to operate both manually and run
of the water with low cost and minimum human effort. automatically with a motion control strategy based on
ultrasonic distance measurement. The major drawback
I. INTRODUCTION: observed was, movement of the ship was not smooth and no
Water is an important resource to survive on the earth, it control over the collection of garbage. In [6] introduced a
covers over 70% of the earth's surface, amongst only 3% of new concept of flexibility crawling mechanism in designing
that is drinkable water. Water is called a universal solvent an industrial underwater cleaning boat, which is capable of
that means it can dissolve most of the substances including working underwater, scanning the desired surface, and
toxic materials from factories, sewage, chemicals, etc. recording biological reactions. The system design was
Because of this, water is completely polluted by human limited to clean bio-fouled in water surfaces. “Efficient Lake
activities. The major problem that living organisms facing is Garbage Collector by Using Pedal Operated Boat” was
water pollution which means the introduction of foreign described by Aakash Sinha et al. [7]. The proposed work was
materials into water bodies. The major causes of water based on human pedaling, the system was mechanical in
pollution are sewage disposal, garbage, and liquid wastes of nature. Since no electronics involved in the design, there is
households and chemical industries. Discharging these no automatic control over the garbage collection. In [8] a
chemicals into water bodies is harming the lives of the method was presented for cleaning the floating debris
aquatic ecosystem as well as the water is becoming non- present in the water bodies. The function of the designed
drinkable [1]. robot is to pick up the garbage particles from the water
surface and dispose of them into the tray provided. But the
Indian rivers like Ganga contribute over 40% of system was not automated to detect the trash. Soumya et al.
water for the Indian population across 11 states, serving [9] proposed “Pond Cleaning Robot”, the machine is
around an estimated population of 500 million people which operated using a smartphone to remove the debris from the
is very high compared to any other rivers in India, but it was lake. The machine is designed based on the AT89S51
ranked second most polluted river in the world in 2017 [2]. controller. The system had no sensors for automatic
The government had undertaken a project called ‘Namami detection of garbage and guide the robot [9]. ‘Water Surface
Gange program’ in 2014 with a budget of around 20,000 Cleaning Robot’ was developed by Raghavi et al [10]. The
crores to clean the holy river Ganga [3]. Similarly, there are main aim of the work proposed was to develop a surface
a lot of problems regarding water pollution under the vehicle. The robot was employed with water quality
Godavari river, which affects the human life and beauty of monitoring sensors. The major limitation observed with this
the Godavari river. Likewise, many of the projects have been method is -it is not cost-efficient and the process of
undertaken by the government to control water pollution. manufacturing is complex.
The impact of water pollution is widespread. It causes many
severe water-borne diseases such as diarrhea, trachoma, III. PROPOSED SYSTEM MODEL:
hepatitis, etc., to humans. According to WHO, 22% of all To address the issues discussed in the previous section, this
communicable diseases are water-borne diseases [4]. The paper describes the system “Swachh Hasth- A water
maximum impact is on marine animals because their cleaning robot”. The proposed system design employs
survival is completely dependent on water. Due to the sensors to record parameters such as the detection of
abundant growth of algae, the oxygen content in the water obstacles & their distance from the boat, and identification
becomes lesser, which may lead to the death of fishes and of living or non-living organisms. Based on the sensors'
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Published by : International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
http://www.ijert.org ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 9 Issue 07, July-2020
readings, the boat and robotic arm are controlled for picking sensors; another one for controlling the robotic arm. The
up the floating trashes in the water. The block diagram of the hardware requirements are discussed in the following
proposed system is illustrated in Figure 1. The system design section.
concept is explained in two stages; the first stage involves
the water boat with sensors assembly and the second stage 1. MICROCONTROLLER (Arduino UNO R3 CH340G):
is the robotic arm. The controller used is ATmega328 on Arduino UNO
platform. The controller takes input from the smartphone
Hardware Requirements: & sensors and operates the boat and robotic arm as per
The hardware of the system is based on the Arduino Uno the requirement.
platform. Two Arduino Uno boards are employed one used
for controlling wheels of the boat & taking input from the
Figure 1: Block diagram of Swachh Hasth Robot
2. ULTRASONIC SENSOR: This distance measuring Software Requirements:
sensor is used to detect the obstacle and its distance The system is designed around the Arduino IDE and
from the water boat. Blynk app. These tools are discussed in the following
paragraphs.
3. PIR SENSOR: The purpose of the passive infrared
sensor (PIR) is to identify whether the obstacle detected 1. Arduino IDE: It is an open-source integrated
is living organism or nonliving garbage. development environment (IDE); allows users to
program the compatible boards. In the proposed work
4. BLUETOOTH MODULE hc05: HC-05 module Arduino boards are programmed using Arduino IDE to
here acts as a bridge to control the robotic arm read the sensor inputs & control the wheels and robotic
movement and wheels of the boat. arm. It is also compatible with the Blynk app for
controlling mechanism.
5. DC MOTORS: 4 DC motors with wheels are used 2. Blynk App: It is a digital dashboard allows user to build
to propel the water boat as per the commands given. a graphical user interface (GUI) by dragging and
dropping of widgets. It is used for real-time control of
6. ROBOTIC ARM: It is equipped with servo motors. robot wheels and the robotic arm.
Depending on the given instructions, the arm adjusts in
particular directions, picks up the trash, and dumps it to IV. PROCESS FLOW:
the dumping space.
This section describes the operation of the proposed water
7. SMARTPHONE: Android Smartphone is used to boat with robotic arm. An algorithm has been developed to
control the motion of the boat and servo motors. task the microcontroller to read the inputs from the PIR and
ultrasonic sensors and based on the sensed information take
appropriate action. Figure 2 depicts the flowchart of water
boat and sensor assembly operation and Figure 3 illustrates
the flowchart of robotic arm operation.
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(This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)
Published by : International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
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Vol. 9 Issue 07, July-2020
Figure 2: Flowchart of water boat Figure 3: Flowchart of robotic arm and sensor assembly operation
V. IMPLEMENTATION: The simulation is carried out in two phases, the
first phase is the IR controlled DC motors assembly with
The proposed concept is still in the development stage to sensors to visualize the water boat working (Figure 4), and
include advanced features; therefore, the work has been the second phase is the Arduino controlled servo motors
implemented virtually. As an alternative to the physical using push button switches illustrating the functionality of
implementation, the functionalities of the proposed system the robotic arm (Figure 5).
were simulated using an open source simulation tool
TINKERCAD.
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Published by : International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
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Vol. 9 Issue 07, July-2020
Figure 4: Water boat assembly
Figure 5: Robotic arm assembly
VI. RESULTS motors as elbow, wrist, and finger of the robotic arm for
The simulation results of the proposed work are discussed in collecting the trash floating on the water surface.
this section. DC motors for forward/reverse movement of Figure 6 shows (i) the DC motors operation
buoy including the left and right direction movement is been showing positive rpm (forward motion) of the water boat.
programmed and simulated using TINKERCAD. Passive IR (ii) ultrasonic sensor indicting the distance of the green dot
sensor and ultrasonic sensor are simulated for trash detection (trash) from the sensor in inches & centimeters, and (iii) PIR
and measurement of distance of the trash from the water sensor with buzzer indicates whether the detected obstacle
boat. The virtual Robotic Arm has been tested. This is is living organism or garbage. The buzzer will turn on
carried out by programming and operating the 3 servo indicating living organism; if it’s off indicates that the
detected obstacle is garbage.
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Published by : International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
http://www.ijert.org ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 9 Issue 07, July-2020
Figure 6: (i) DC motors movement, (ii) Ultrasonic sensor operation, and (iii) PIR sensor with buzzer operation
Figure 7: Servo motors movement indicating the robotic arm operation
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utilizes two sensor mechanism to detect and collect the
Z. (2009). An Autonomous Ship for Cleaning the Garbage
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