iShop

intelligent Shopping Helper for Online Pickup SDP Group 5

Problem Statement

In the past year the Covid-19 pandemic necessitated curbside pickup orders because individuals tried to avoid contact with the others. With the current online ordering system, there is still the need for employees to go and pick up the items in the store and hand them to the customer, which introduces more person to person contact. This also means that employees need to stop helping the customers in the store to grab online orders, which slows the process of moving inventory.

Why So far, almost 1 million Americans have died from Covid-19. Despite the deployment of high efficacy vaccines, there are still 92.6 million Americans at high risk of contracting a serious case of Covid. To further protect at-risk individuals, we propose an autonomous system that improves accessibility in grocery stores. This push for increased automation hopes to reduce the need for expensive food couriers and increase the safety of an important environment with high human traffic.

What I.S.H.O.P hopes to automate grocery acquisition through wireless ordering. It receives an order from the customer and follows a scripted path to collect grocery items and return to the base station where the customer can collect the items from the onboard storage. During the whole process, the customer never comes in contact with another person throughout the process making the whole experience completely automated.

How I.S.H.O.P would fill the void that currently exists in automating customer interactions inside a grocery store. This increase in automation would reduce the possible human contact that takes place during customer grocery acquisition, improving the safety of immunocompromised customers. I.S.H.O.P also has the ability to checkout a customer's order, eliminating both the overhead and human contact related to cashiers. Similarly this improves customer safety while also reducing operating costs.

Shaun Ghosh

Computer Engineering
Software Lead, Communication Systems

Rohan Sheridan

Electrical Engineering
Team Coordinator, On board Programming

Edon Tuli

Electrical Engineering
Budget Management, Fabricator

Neil Wei

Electrical Engineering
PCB Lead, Locomotion & Design

Specifications

The Requirements can be broken down into five specifications. These specifications are shown in the table below (Table 1). The goals should be reached in an efficient and compact way. The robot should collect all items and complete a full order in less than 2 minutes in our prototype, course correction of less than 0.25 seconds in case it starts moving from the straight line, turn into the correct next line over 90% of the time, stop at the ordered items to pick them up, and come back to the correct destination. The robot should be able to hold up to a total of 1 cubic foot items and up to 2lbs. The robot should be able to pull items off the shelf itself. Our storage prototype contains 2 shelves with 2 items each. The robot should always receive orders wirelessly and should be able to complete these trips over 95% of the time. All these requirements should be reached in order to have a complete prototype and happy customer.

PDR

PDR Slides

MDR Slides

MDR

CDR

CDR Slides

FPR

FPR Slides

Hardware Components

1. Raspberry Pi 4b
2. IR Sensors x5
3. Ultrasonic Sensor
4. 14.8 V Battery x2
5. DC Gear Motors
6. Power Converters
7. Wheel Motors x2
8. Arm Motor
9. Servo Motor

Software Components

1. Python
2. C
3. Tkinter Python Package
4. Shell Scrip