The hackers over at [HTX Studio] built a set of twenty trash cans which can automatically catch and remove rubbish.
In order to catch trash a bin needs to do two things: detect where trash will land; and then get there, fast. The second part is easy: three big motors with wheels under the bin. But how does a bin know where the trash will land? It uses a camera installed in the bin itself for that.
[HTX Studio] iteratively trained a model to process visual information from the camera to identify common types of trash. When it sees a trained object flying through the air it rushes to catch it where it will land. After many rounds of fine-tuning it finally started to work reliably.
Once the basic function was working they had some fun creating various specialized variants. One to mop the floor; one to play rock-paper-scissors with you, sort of; and one with an automatic lid, which can be used to “talk trash”. After these three came the ultimate bin: The Punishment Bin, which can fire soft darts.
In addition to the twenty bins themselves they made a recharge station with six bays containing magnetic contact points for recharging the batteries, and a heat-seal mega bin which can empty the smaller bins and put new garbage bags into them. They added LED lighting into the floor of the studio which is used to direct the small bins to the mega bin to be emptied automatically at night time when the office lights go out.
If you’re thinking you’ve seen something like this before, we covered something similar back in 2012.
Thanks to [Jack] for sending this one in.
There is some serious engineering work hiding behind the slick editing and nice visuals. A welcome change from the editing heavy videos with a simple 3D printed enclosure
okay… this is brilliant, funny, well done, very fun video, this made my day.
Would you share/sell Trash schematics, device or code for basic usecase : I totally understand it might not be perfect in the real world, the video is very well storytell but it’s a good start to play around.
Jsus fcking c*rist. That’s absolutely insane! The nighttime bin emptying routine is very ‘fantasia’. Love it.
This is very very cool.
But practically, chop out the power-hungry always-on aiming system and use the bin like normal, but keep the automatic emptying part. That’s the good part.
If you could put a Mr Fusion from Back To The Future in there too that’d be great. We’re behind schedule on that, I think.
This is a little off topic, but I’ve always wondered how the economics of these outfits work. Looking at the channel, they’ve built some wild stuff: remote submersibles, robots that chuck gum in your mouth, an origami assembly line, and so on.
I easily see six figures in parts and materials on their channel, and that’s not counting the weeks of dedicated time most of these projects would take. They get a good number of views, but not enough to break even. Some of these projects could conceivably be work for hire, but most of them are just too goofy. I guess this could be coming out of their marketing budget, but this youtube channel is the ONLY evidence of this firm’s existence I can find.
So where’s the money coming from? (And can I have some of it?)
When you say 6 figures worth of parts, by what are you estimating?
I believe you that it’s a fair amount of hardware, but perhaps costs are lower, due to location?
Ok. What empties the Mega Bin? And what happens when the bin liners run out? And if a bin is partially full does it still get emptied and use a full amount of liner refill?
An ARRS with a talking trash can. What would Rimmer think of that?
Better or worse than a talking toaster?
No recycling of plastic and metal?
One of the most entertaining and professional looking project videos I have ever seen, and cool project.
I thought they’d just put arrows on the ceiling so that the bins could find the mega-bin.
missed opportunity to make them look like urbanmechs.
youtube… give us a break of the “must be entertaining…”