Low Cost Autonoumous Street Sweeper for Lahore City Roads
This research proposal has been written to overcome the road cleanliness problem of Lahore city. Currently, one of a major problem which Lahore faces is road cleanliness. The dust and dirt on the road as well as metal and other pieces on the road are a problem for people living around. It is harmful
2025-06-28 16:34:02 - Adil Khan
Low Cost Autonoumous Street Sweeper for Lahore City Roads
Project Area of Specialization Artificial IntelligenceProject SummaryThis research proposal has been written to overcome the road cleanliness problem of Lahore city. Currently, one of a major problem which Lahore faces is road cleanliness. The dust and dirt on the road as well as metal and other pieces on the road are a problem for people living around. It is harmful to people as well as to the vehicles driven on the roads. Dust and dirt cause asthma and other related diseases in Lahore city. On the other hand, glass and metal pieces are harmful to the tires of vehicles. Previously, a Turkish company was using human-driven road cleaning vehicles and the approximate cost was about more than 300 Million per year. Due to this heavy cost the current government stopped the contract. Though it saved money but ultimately increases asthma and dusty environment.
Other than high cost, another main problem of human-driven road cleaning vehicles is they are driven by humans. According to many research studies it has been proven that the main cause of road accidents are human drivers. Hence, the risk of accidents with human-driven road cleaners is far greater as compared to self-driven cleaners. More than 80% of accidents occur due to the negligence of human drivers such as driving drunk, talking on the phone, drowsy driving, etc. Putting self-driven road cleaners into action will reduce more than 60% release of harmful substances simultaneously, it will increase more than 10% fuel efficiency.
Keeping in mind the above problems, as a final year project we propose to develop a self-driven road cleaner that will be cost-effective and suitable to be driven on the roads of Lahore. It will detect road lanes and drive itself in the lanes efficiently. Object detection will be performed to prevent accidents in congested roads of Lahore, thus it will have a function of anti-collision and automatic avoidance. A camera will be used for machine vision recognition. With the help of input received from the camera, Road Cleaner will be able to perceivethe environment in its field of view. In this way, it will seek road lanes to be able to drive on the defined boundary. It will measure turning angle by performing computations on the position of road lanes and take turns accordingly. The main feature would be cost efficiency as the cost to make this machine is very less as compared to other road cleaners available in the market. Road Cleaner itself will be eco-friendly, with no pollution and no smoke emissions.
Project ObjectivesRoads act like the backbone of a country. Clean roads are essential to make Lahore environmentally attractive. Waste management steps are required to make roads clean and pollution-free. It will improve the health of people living in Lahore. Since the benefits from the implementation of this project consist of health and sanitation, if it becomes successful then it can be expanded to other congested cities of Pakistan. Road cleaning machines are vastly being used in private as well as commercial areas such as hospitals, bus stands, malls, lawns, etc. But most of these machines require a higher amount of fuel like petrol, diesel or electricity to perform their tasks. Using such heavy machinery itself produces a high amount of pollution to pollute the environment such as noise pollution, exhaust pollution. To save energy and nature a low-cost and user-friendly road cleaning machine will be developed. The focus of this project is to develop a machine that will be self-driven to give relief to mankind. It will save time and effort for humans. We will use such devices and sensors which are very low cost, highly durable, and easily available in the market. All the components required for the development of road cleaning machines are safe and pollution-free.
Project Implementation MethodSelf-driving robotics are increasingly getting popular nowadays. In this project, a self-driving road cleaner is proposed which consists of different components including sensors, electric motors, edge computing devices, actuators (i.e. electric motors), and brushes. Different algorithms will be used for lane detection and collision avoidance. Lane detection is applied with methods such as Canny edge detection to detect edges of lanes. The threshold is applied to make lane detection as smooth as possible. Hough transform will be used for extracting features from the field of view. The objective of this process is to identify road lanes from the frames captured through the camera. The equation for Hough transform is defined as:
r= xcos? + ysin?
Where r is the distance from the initial to the closet point on a straight line, it is the angle between the x-axis and line which is connecting the initial point to the closet point. After this process lane will be detected successfully. By angle generated from lane detection and the threshold value, the edge computing device will send output signals to actuators (i.e. turn right, turn left). Speed will be controlled by using Proportional+Integral+Derivative (PID) controller. The reason for using PID controller in speed controlling is because of the easiness of parameter tuning and implementation. PID controller is tuned by changing parameter gains to optimized values as shown in equation 1.
PID = (Kp*P) + (Ki*I) + (Kd*D) ..(1)
Where P is the absolute steering angle:
P = steering angle
I is the integration part of controller obtained by taking the sum of steering angle, starting with I with zero:
I = 0
I = I + error
D is the derivation part of the controller obtained by finding the difference between the present steering angle with previous steering angle:
D = steering angle-previous steering angle
Kp, Ki, and Kd are tuning parameters used for tuning of PID controllers. Moreover, ultrasonic sonars will be used for anti-collision and automatic avoidance for self-driving cleaner. The methodology diagram for the proposed project is depicted in figure 1.
Fig 1: Proposed Methodology Diagram
Waste on roads tends to be a very serious issue for people living around as well as for the vehicles driven on the roads. The self-driving Road Cleaner will remove the waste which will lessen the risk of skids and collisions of vehicles. It will allow drivers to easily judge the distance between road curbs and edges. It will be beneficial for removing metal and plastic waste materials left over by vehicles and discarded trash which can be harmful to pedestrians as well as animals passing by the road. It will also enhance the beauty of Lahore which will deliver a positive message of cleanliness to the tourists who visit Lahore for tourism. This step will enhance Tourism, which will increase the earning of both the government and the people of Lahore
Self-driving road cleaner will help to reduce the number of accidents that happened due to human drivers. It will decrease the damage that occurred due to risky actions such as drugged driving and distracted drivers. Reduced accidents will automatically reduce expenses such as hospital bills, machine repair, etc. Moreover, traffic jams also occur due to accidents, reducing accidents will reduce traffic jams. It will be economically beneficial as there will be no use of petrol and diesel as fuel in it. Self-driving road cleaner will be highly helpful in reducing pollution such as air pollution, noise pollution, dust pollution, etc. In this way, the major issue of global warming will also be controlled. The components and devices required for manufacturing the road cleaner are inexpensive as compared to the road cleaner available in the market.
Technical Details of Final DeliverableIn the end, a fully self-driving Road Cleaner will be manufactured which will be able to clean roads of Lahore efficiently. It will be cost-effective as compared to other road cleaners available in the market. It will be completely eco-friendly as it will be powered by batteries. Electric motors will be used as actuators of self-driving Road Cleaner. It will be completely controlled by the edge computing device (i.e. Raspberry Pi 4). The edge computing device will receive input from sensors such as the camera and ultrasonic sonars. The camera will be used for machine vision recognition and ultrasonic sonars will be used for object detection. The edge computing device will apply different algorithms on the frames for lane detection to get steering angle. The speed of the self-driving road cleaner will be controlled by applying Proportional+Integral+Derivative (PID) controller. Moreover, the input received from ultrasonic sonars will be used for anti-collision and automatic avoidance. Brushes will be installed for efficiently cleaning roads in Lahore. Batteries used in self-driving road cleaner will be rechargeable and long-lasting. Moreover, a good quality charger will be installed for efficient and quick charging of batteries.
Final Deliverable of the Project HW/SW integrated systemCore Industry ITOther IndustriesCore Technology RoboticsOther TechnologiesSustainable Development Goals Good Health and Well-Being for People, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Climate ActionRequired Resources| Item Name | Type | No. of Units | Per Unit Cost (in Rs) | Total (in Rs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total in (Rs) | 80000 | |||
| Edge computing device | Equipment | 1 | 20550 | 20550 |
| Advanced electric motor | Equipment | 4 | 300 | 1200 |
| rechargeable cell | Equipment | 16 | 125 | 2000 |
| Power bank | Equipment | 1 | 3150 | 3150 |
| High-definition digital camera | Equipment | 1 | 41100 | 41100 |
| High quality Ultra-sonic sonar | Equipment | 4 | 500 | 2000 |
| Circuit designing | Miscellaneous | 1 | 4500 | 4500 |
| Contingencies | Miscellaneous | 1 | 5500 | 5500 |