PSU students fix ‘automated scarecrows’ for Casella landfills

Students at Plymouth State University (PSU) in New Hampshire are helping restore solar-powered, stationary robots used by Casella to deter birds from landfills.

As reported by Valley News, six of these robots were bought by Casella, but maintenance has lagged recently, and it’s been about two years since they ran properly.

PSU heard about them through an alumnus, and Bret Kulakovich, an adjunct professor at PSU who oversees the school’s robotics lab, thought they sounded perfect for rehabilitation.

“There was a course coming up in industrial robotics, and I like having real-world applications. We’re just starting out as well, and it’s nice to work on something other than in-class problems,” he tells Valley News.

Upon their arrival, Kulakovich says the robots needed substantial work, with some parts not in “good shape.” He highlighted things like a lurking wasp’s nest, lack of power to fans that caused overheating and a loose gearbox as issues they found. The largest problem, however, was lack of knowledge for systems that dated back a decade or more.

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“These were either not labeled at all or made up of components that weren’t sold for the past five or six years. The company that had originally done the software and integration was out of business,” Kulakovich says. “The operating system was Linux, but it was installed in French. The notes for the components were in Chinese. But not all the notes—some were in French,” he said.

To understand the circuit board controlling the robot, they had to find the manufacturer, starting with Google image searches. Students eventually found similar parts from a manufacturer posting on Ali Express, but the details were in Hebrew.

“It had the appearance of that part, gave us the name of the manufacturer and part number and we found some pages scanned in from a manual,” Kulakovich says.

The team then worked to give Casella a scalable solution, deciding whether to keep repairing what was there or to redesign it and rebuild it from scratch, taking advantage of a decade’s improvements in software, electronics and hardware.

“That’s exactly the sort of decision-making that college courses should teach,” Kulakovich notes. “There are certainly some forensic adventures going on.”

The robotics degree, which PSU says was the first of its kind in the state, launched in 2021. It recently received a $1 million federal grant to help build a new lab.