Now, dustbin will come to you to seek garbage

Mumbai: The interactive dustbin developed by the six IIT-Bombay students will not only approach people and tell them to put trash into it, but it is also programmed to say 'thank you' when they oblige. The device has three sensors programmed to detect the nearest person, align the wheels towards him/her and ask the person to put garbage lying around into the bin.

As reported by Bangalore Mirror, six students from the Industrial Design Centre (IDC) at IIT, Bombay have developed an interactive dustbin that actually approaches people and tells them to put trash into it. The design team comprising Ajay Mittal, Aniket Sarangdhar, Aniruddha Kadam, Mandar Sarnaik, Saurabh Srivastava and Shaswath V - all second-year students of Interaction Design - have named the device 'Sustain-o-Bin'. It is entirely made up of waste material with some ingenious programming and technology support. Its three sensors are: ultrasonic sensor that detects people and other objects, making the bin 'follow' people, an infra-red sensor which keeps the bin inside the marked border and stops it from colliding with objects beyond it, and a touch sensor which enables audio feedback whenever trash is dropped into the bin. It says 'Thank you' and moves away

The bin was designed and developed as a course project and later chosen for an international design conference on sustainability held at IDC this month. The theme of the event was 'In a Planet of our Own'. "Workshops at the event were meant to address the problem that many designs are good, but not sustainable. There were discussions on design in an interconnected global world. Our Sustain-o-bin was highly appreciated at the conference. Apart from the three sensors that we have used in the design, the dustbin works on a rechargeable battery," said Mittal.

"Sustain-o-Bin is made up mostly of waste materials, including cardboard of boxes in which computers are packed. The body of the bin is covered with old newspapers, which increases its sustainability quotient. We were working on Sustain-o-bin as part of our course work, and it matched the theme of the conference. The entire Sustain-o-Bin project-right from conceptualisation, devising means to execute the idea to final execution-took around 12-14 working days," said Srivastava.

"We had invited experts from across the world to talk on various aspects of design and importance of sustainability. Young artists and designers at many levels fail to understand the importance of the concept. The interactive dustbin is one of the designs we presented at the event," said Dr Ajanta Sen, Faculty, IDC, IIT-Bombay.

For the team, the idea behind an interactive dustbin was to help maintain cleanliness. "People feel free to litter anywhere and everywhere. We thought that if people can't walk up to the dustbin, we would design a dustbin that would walk up to them and ask them to put trash into it," summed up Kadam.