Automatic Book Organizer
Alexander Rudolph, Emiliano Perez, Michael Cabrera
School of Engineering
Faculty Supervisor: Hao Jiang
This project is an automatic book organizer that sorts books according to a predetermined order given by a user. The purpose of this is to be used as front-of-house sorting in libraries for when librarians are placing books onto shelves to be viewed by visitors. Our approach in accomplishing this is to program an ESP32 microcontroller to control 4 motors, 2 for vertical movement, 1 for horizontal movement, and one to operate a forklift. The microcontroller also communicates with a user interface running on an external computer that allows users to communicate with the device. The device is a forklift mechanism the size of a bookshelf, that grabs books from a predetermined location. Our approach is unique because most existing sorting devices that libraries currently use are solely for back-end sorting/storage, opposed to ours which is specifically for shelving books at the front of house. While traditional paper books are being phased out in favor of digital eBooks, the need for physical copies is eternal. Thus, there needs to be a way to sort those copies so that when the time comes where a person needs to access them, it is more easily accessible from the database.