Telepathic Faucet

Water is a finite resource and it is important to use it responsibly. However, sustainable use of water is rare in many households. This research project with IRIS Design Lab at Stanford University asks whether an intelligent faucet, which is able to recognize users and use behavior-predicting morphing algorithms to learn the user's preference for a given activity (such as water temperature when doing the dishes), can teach and train the user in conservation to use water in their home more sustainably.

I worked on designing and constructing this automatic, faucet controlled by Arduino able to recognize users and output water with the desired temperature and flow rate accordingly.

Lessons Learned

This was a research project I worked on over a summer. The project would keep going after I left so I had to make sure that the people who came after me would be able to use the work I had developed over my time with the project. The importance of documentation became evident. I made sure to provide detailed explanations of what I had done, the assumptions I made, what my shortcomings had been and what problems I encountered along the way. I made sure to make all this information available in the lab's shared drive. I am glad that I took the time and put in the effort to do this. The next person to take over the project contacted me once with a clarifying question. I had not been perfect but their email proved to me that my efforts had worked.