Friend or Foe

Project Objective

Since lab sessions run until 7:30, there is no time for dinner! We are always snacking in the lab, but with a limited supply, we can only share snacks with our friends. Therefore, we created the Friend or Foe snack dispenser to select who gets snacks. Furthermore, this project will allow us to explore the computation ability of the Raspberry Pi to handle complex algorithms such as the Haar Cascade facial recognition algorithm.

Introduction

We created a facial recognition snack dispenser utilizing a Raspberry Pi Camera, PiTFT, and servo motors. Using OpenCV, we detect a person’s face and match it to our pre-existing library of faces; if a person’s face is recognized, they will get a chocolate egg, otherwise, they will receive a marble. If a user is unrecognized, they will be given the opportunity to add their face into the library, as long as they know the secret passcode. Users will interact with the snack dispenser through the PiTFT screen and on-board buttons.

Project Demo