Picking up Cigarette Butts?
 

Does anyone have any ideas on how to pick up cigarette butts via a robotic mechanism?

I'm designing a robot that will pick up trash from ditches and what not... a huge problem is the cigarette butts on the side of the road among rocks. I've developed a way to pick up other trash such as pop cans, paper/plastic bags, and flag all other objects that would not be able to be lifted.

Team 648 spends several days cleaning up Quad City roadsides and other areas, so I figured it would be a nice way to attract more attention to FIRST and engineering if people saw students picking up trash alongside a robot.

I'm going to start Vex prototyping it tomorrow and then hopefully have a fully built robot by the time we do the X-Stream Cleanup in August.

Thanks in advance for any input.

Jeremiah

Re: Picking up Cigarette Butts?
 

The only thing I can think of is the fact that cigarette buds are probably lighter than rocks, so you could try some sort of vacuum. You may still need to use a filter of some sort though.

Re: Picking up Cigarette Butts?
 

I'm thinking a very low force spring set attached to some needles, so the needles will spear the cigarette butts, but leave everything else (rocks and so on) on the ground.

Either that or a vacuum...

Re: Picking up Cigarette Butts?
 

Would a rake work?

Re: Picking up Cigarette Butts?
 

How about using a vacuum and/or rake to pick up EVERYthing on the ground the size of a cigarette butt or smaller (limit the size of the intake on the vacuum and/or make the width between rake blades the proper size) , and spitting it out into a chamber with some kind of screen mesh. Using gravity, stuff smaller than cigarette butts would fall through, leaving the butts.

Seems complicated... kind of like a typical FIRST robot :p

Jacob

Re: Picking up Cigarette Butts?
 

If the cigarette butts are among small gravel, then a vacuum might not be the best idea, unless you want your robot's new nickname to become "ol' Clunky". ;)

But if they are among anything larger (at least an inch or two across) rocks, and the vacuum isn't super powerful, then you should be fine. Vacuums do have the advantage of being able to suck up multiple ones at once, so they do present a nice solution. I'd do some testing first, though. Go to a local car wash* to one of the coin-op vacuum cleaners, and try sucking up cigarette butts from around the machine. (Alternately, you could try using the air intake on a leaf blower.) If it works well, then go for it and put it on your robot.

* An industrial strength vacuum cleaner or a leaf blower would probably be better handled to cope with rocks than your typical central vac or Dyson, so better to test it out with those.

Re: Picking up Cigarette Butts?
 

I like Craig's idea of using needles. You could make the needles come through a sliding piece of sheet metal. The sheet metal would slide down the needles to clean them of the offending butts :D
Or you could use something like the R/C airplane Woodpecker. It consists of a rotating barrel with very small, sharp points of metal. It could roll along the ground and pick up the butts. Than you could devise a way to knock off the butts from the points.
E-mail me and I will send you a picture of the Woodpecker.

Or you could get a bunch of Freshman to pick them up :)

Re: Picking up Cigarette Butts?
 

Flamethrower.
Cigarettes are flammable, rocks are not.
Don't overcomplicate things.

OR

Have a steady stream of water coming out the front of the robot. Trash tends to float; simply have a sieve at the bottom of the hill for all the trash to float into and the water to pass through.
(same effect can be reached with a leaf blower. 30 bonus points if you can blow the trash up 12 inches in the air.)

Re: Picking up Cigarette Butts?
 

Best idea yet!

The vacuum may work, but the butts are sometimes embedded into the ground. The needles might be the next best option.

Re: Picking up Cigarette Butts?
 

I was thinking exactly along the line of what Wayne had mentioned. The needles through the metal would be fairly simple.

The flamethrower would be ideal... in a desert. I like it, but I don't want to start a wildfire, that would be counterproductive.

Re: Picking up Cigarette Butts?
 

go along the lines of a street sweeper. Have a mabuchi motor spin a brush and then have a collector where the butts are deposited.

Re: Picking up Cigarette Butts?
 

Budda,
Vacuum, the little buggers are pretty light.

Re: Picking up Cigarette Butts?
 

i was illiterate just thinking about this problem right before i got on cd to night i
think a curved needleis the way to go

Re: Picking up Cigarette Butts?
 

The only thing I'm worried about with those suggestions is picking/kicking up the dust. If I were to do this, how would I resolve that issue?

The pickup system has also got to withstand multiple terrains, which poses the most problems with the street sweeper.

Re: Picking up Cigarette Butts?
 

How about.....

...you build a robot that promotes the cessation of smoking in your community?

Then as people start to quit as a result of your creation, the cigarette butts on the road will gradually fade away.

Perhaps a bit too altruistic (and unrealistic), but it's a nice thought. :p