YouTuber builds robot to make boyfriend take out the trash

Is there anything more irritating than living with a partner who procrastinates on their share of the chores? Even if it isn’t malicious, it sure is annoying. Taking out the trash is YouTuber CircuitCindy’s boyfriend’s responsibility, but he often fails to do the task in a timely manner. That forced Cindy to implement a sinister solution: a robotic trashcan that follows her boyfriend and makes pointed comments until he empties it.

This robot is a motorized, Mecanum-wheeled base that carries the standard plastic trashcan Cindy and her boyfriend own. An Arduino Mega 2560 controls the four wheel motors through H-bridge drivers. Cindy chose the Mega because the robot has a lot of sensors — 13 in total. Eight of those are ultrasonic sensors used for obstacle detection, with one on each side and corner. Then there are four PIR sensors that detect body heat, which will ideally be from the boyfriend. Finally, there is an infrared sensor at the top of the trashcan to determine when the bin is full.

When that infrared sensor sees that the trashcan is at capacity, it begins searching for body heat. When it finds suitable heat, it begins following that. As it does, it plays pre-recorded audio messages through a DFRobot DFPlayer Mini MP3 player. That could be any recording, but Cindy mostly settled on passive aggressive comments in her own voice. 

The only way to make the snark stop is by taking out the trash, which is a pretty effective technique in theory. In practice, the robot has some issues, such as an inability to differentiate between Cindy and her boyfriend. Those issues make it seem unlikely that the robot will see long-term use in their home.