Researchers from Oregon State University-Cascades College of Engineering are developing a prototype of a smart compost bin that tracks household food waste, potentially leading to a solution for the issue of global food waste.

The device will reportedly be designed so that users can enter prompts describing the food items being deposited in the bin. Once deposited, the user’s inputs will be transcribed via automatic speech recognition along with an associated weight measurement of the items deposited.

Further, the device is also expected to collect 3D images and sensor measurements of the food waste, subsequently building a dataset for measuring food waste with computer vision.

The team believes that the fully automated process of measuring food waste will enable researchers to more accurately and efficiently collect data, calling the smart bin the first steps toward developing a fully autonomous, computer vision solution that enables households to monitor the amounts and types of these materials they produce.

Such, data, according to the researchers, could potentially impact the behaviors of consumers and inspire them to make changes about their food waste habits.