In 2017-2018, Chaitu and I participated in ACSEF (Alameda County Science and Engineering Faire) with our OpenCV/TensorFlow computer vision/machine learning-based machine for point-of-origin sorting of urban waste.

We won the following awards:

  • A Division First Place (in the HS-CMIM division)
  • Air Force Special Award - this award is judged by Air Force service members in cooperation with ACSEF
  • E-Mentor Invitation - we were invited to mentor future ACSEF students

Our project applied Google’s Inception v2 neural network to the task of waste separation. It used a camera and Raspberry Pi 3 computer to sort waste into trash, recycling, and compost. Here is a picture of our working prototype sitting in my garage before being transported to the competition:

The Trash Sorter