Introduction

In our group project, we are going to build a vending machine. The vending machine can detecting the movement of human through PIR motion sensor, determining and counting the coins including quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, selecting the items through pressing keypad, voice control, and RFID. So our vending machine provide two payment ways for customers to purchase items through cash(coins) and RFID, and two methods for customers to select goods such as voice control and keypad pression.

First, in order to save energy but activated the vending machine on time when the customers are coming, we decide to use the PIR motion sensor to determine the motion of human so that the vending machine will turn off when there are no one stand in front of the vending machine, and the vending machine can active immediately when customers are coming such as turn on the built-in LED and voice control.

Second, there are two ways provided to customers about payment methods. The one way is using coin detector. We will use light sensor to measure the size of coin and then use electromagnets to determine the type of coin(quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies). The other way is to use the RFID to pay the items like the student ID in Miami University. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. The tags contain electronically stored information. For those customers who usually use the vending machine can purchase the goods easily and they do not need to spend time in inserting money.

Third, there are also two ways provided for customers to select their items. The one way is to use the keypad. There is a keypad embedded into the vending machine so that the customers can press the number of the items and the quantity of the goods that they want to buy. The other way is to use the voice sensor to determine the frequency of human’s voice to select the items. It provides the convenience to those customers who carried a lot of stuff or disabled people.

Besides these sensor above, we may also use the LED to light up the items inside of the vending machine, and use the servo to transfer the goods from inside of vending machine to outside of customers. Also, buzzers will also be needed as a speaker of warning tone.

Team Member

Yi Zhan

Yezhou Ni

Hanqing Nie

Haitao Lu

Professor: Dr. Rajasekhas