Main Project description and presentation

https://gitlab.com/drone-fighters/shores-cleaning-drone

Proof of concept and a related build from our university team(also included in the Main Project):

https://gitlab.com/Basilisvirus/solar-panel

The idea of this project was first born in Climathon competition 2018 in Athens, Greece with a team of four, who are reported in the Main project's file. Since then, the team did not continue with the development of this idea, but the concept remained a good opportunity to help the environment. This year, in spaceappschallenge, i decided to continue with the idea, with a main goal to keep the project as simple as possible, using existing technologies.

This project helps collect litter from shores and beaches, without the need (or very little) of human intervention. It utilizes flying automated drones with a camera at the bottom of their chassis, to detect the litter, and a hook to grab them, and bring them back to a recycle bin or trash can, that is located near its Base. There are also Bases, for each drone that can house the drone, recharge it and help it locate itself. The bases get recharged from their own solar panels and they have trash and recycle bins each, where drones put the litter they gather.

When we tried to train the algorithm that was responsible to detect the litter, we had a time-limit issue, where we needed at least 2 weeks to train the algorithm at a basic form. We managed to make a small solar panel that charges a battery back then. Since then, a complete project has been made using a solar panel, that charges a battery and saves in a database the rate of its charge, using arduino, esp8266 and raspberry pi with its own database.