ASTRO is an autonomous trash retrieval system that travels through outdoor environments such as parks, fields, or any other kinds of public areas to make today's environment much cleaner.  ASTRO is meant for government owned outdoor areas like public parks but will remain available for private owners (such as a country club owner).

Primary Ideas:

• The design will be primarily based off a vacuum.  This was unable to be further represented in our design because of the unreliable nature of picking specific items on different terrains. After further discussion for our 3D model we designed it to have an opening in the front that will have rotating brushes. This will force the trash in the bot’s container.

• Trash will go inside a containment within the bot.  This design in our bot was passed (we our previous idea was to design the bot with a trash bag connected to it that will hold mall of the collected trash.  This wasn’t passed because our group thought it was taking away from the “recycling” part of our idea while also gaining the fact that it might get caught within itself)

• Trash will be compacted - The trash could be compacted but this would be challenging task to achieve within our design of our bot.

• Trash will be put into a recycling center - A future goal for the ASTRO team is to gain a relationship with the U.S.’s recycling plants to enable our product to directly interact with the current measures of recycling. We are including a feature where consumers have access to the various recycling facilities in their area in case access to public disposal is unavailable.

• Trash will be detected with a biosensor - Biosensors - “A gadget that uses a living life form or natural atoms, particularly catalysts or antibodies, to distinguish the nearness of chemicals.” The sensor will detect whether or not the object presented to it is alive or containing  or inanimate. After extensive research from our research team, there only very few biosensors on the market. Also, the websites that are “selling” biosensors are very sketchy. Many of the websites make you “Request a quote.” The biosensor are not completely crossed off our design. They may be brought up in later discussions in our Astro meetings.

• Astro will be run on rechargeable batteries - Astro wasn’t designed to be a speedy bot so having batteries will make the bot slower but more expensive. Although, having batteries will still be following our Eco-friendly rule.

 

Research on other competitors:

There are fairly similar items on the market, for example;the McVac Environmental (http://www.mcvacenvironmental.com/) who have been up and running for a while. There are multiple of companies that intend to clean the environment, but they are not similar to our idea. ASTRO is aimed towards an audience of “Green Consumers.”

 

Research on marketing strategies:

Marketing ASTRO could be difficult at first because it is a new unique design and idea. Because ASTRO isn’t something you can flash to your friends, such as jewelry, we are advertising “green consumers.” This audience is ideal because they understand the problem ASTRO is trying to fix.

 

More on Green Consumers:

A “Green Consumer” is someone their lifestyle off being eco-friendly. They are always attempting to search products that well help make our surroundings “extra eco-friendly,”. This direct quote is from Jacquelyn Ottman, who gives a first-person view on what it really means to be a green consumer, or in her case, someone who “dislikes waste”. She is a resource conserver, someone who wants to see the earth clean, and eco-friendly. These are easy ways to really attract these kinds of people, as they’d join the fight for a clean environment. ASTRO will be electronic as well as eco-friendly.Green consumers, they are very similar to resource conservers, and basically have the same intentions (https://www.iisd.org/business/markets/green_who.aspx) Green consumers tend to have more worries however, and will not trust you (us) until you prove your product is completely eco-friendly and will indeed help the environment. How this will play in a part with the robot will take place in the soon future…

 

How ASTRO fits “A Closer Look”:

ASTRO allows our society to take a closer look at the small yet significant leading up causes of global warming. Global warming can completely wipe out species. If we’re taking trash off our Earth then it is lowering the chance of being a problem later on.

That is why we invented ASTRO. ASTRO will not emit dangerous gas because it will be purely electrical. The gasoline emits carbon dioxide, just like a car would, which gets trapped in our atmosphere and causes Earth to be abnormally warmer than it should be causing the ice caps to melt, species to go endangered ho are and maybe even extinct, which can cause a major disruption within our society. We believe that our product does, in fact, fit “A Closer Look.”