Abstract
Many businesses need to efficiently restock paper towels in company bathroom facilities. This disclosure describes a smart paper towel dispenser which includes a built-in scale to detect the weight of the paper towel roll and a WiFi/GPS enabled microcontroller. The rate at which paper towels are dispensed and the device location is obtained to assess the number of towels remaining, the number of towels dispensed, and to determine when the paper towel stock is low and needs to be replaced. An alert is provided to the responsible personnel to replace the paper towels. The data can also be used to build forecasts, e.g., using a regression machine learning model such as a KNN algorithm with supervised data, to identify times of the day when paper towels need to be replaced.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Schow, Kenneth M., "Smart dispensers to optimize restocking process", Technical Disclosure Commons, (December 31, 2019)
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/2832