Technical Report (Draft 1)

As students of Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), we have noticed that the Canopy canteen at the Dover campus is often packed with students and staff between 12 p.m. till 2p.m. daily. Given that student’s lunch breaks are mostly an hour, it is often a struggle to enjoy a meal without the pressure of time before the next lesson begins. A survey was conducted among 27 students showed that 60% of the respondents indicated that they spend approximately 5 to 10 minutes every day circling within the canteen of their choice looking for seats. These results are not inclusive of time taken to walk between crowded canteens searching for available seats as well as time taken queueing up for food. As such, it has become A-Team’s interest to develop a solution to help reduce unnecessary wastage of time.

The 3 canteens Canopy Café, iEat and the Crown Coffee at SIT Dover campus offer a total seating capacity of ____. Canopy canteen has proven to be the preferred lunch venue for students as statistics show that 78% of respondents chose the canteen due to its affordability and wide selection of food. As a result, Canopy canteen becomes overcrowded during lunch hours and patrons tend to spend a considerable amount of time circulating the canteen searching for seats.

Although an additional canteen that is identical to the Canopy canteen could be a possible solution to address the issue of an overcrowding canteen. It may not be feasible due to the high cost of construction incurred by the institution as well as the restriction of limited space within the Dover campus. Therefore, A-Team has come up with an alternative solution which aims to manage crowd control within canteens. This is done by providing real time information of the available seats in each specific canteen so as to influence the decision of students and staff members on whether they should dine at that canteen.

Problem statement:
Instead of wasting time on finding seats at an overcrowded canteen, students and staff members should be able to determine the available seats before patronizing the canteen during peak periods. During lunch hours, students and staff members often waste a substantial amount of time looking for seats in the canteen. There is a need to introduce an mobile application that indicates to users the location of available seats in SIT canteens at a specific point of time to influence students and staff members to patronize a less crowded canteen.

Purpose statement:
The aim of this report is to propose to the estate management of SIT to approve the installation of sensors at the 3 canteens at Dover campus. This report includes; benefits of implementing this system, cost of implementation, stakeholders involved and its impacts, limitations as well as solutions to address the issues raised.

Solution:
Hot Seats utilizes the real-time data to indicate the number of seats available at a specific area. The use of capacitive sensors attached to the underside of the table-top  to detect the presence of people as well as objects within its vicinity. The information collected will then be processed and reflected in the Hot Seats application which allows users to see the specific layout of unoccupied seats and the percentage of available seats.   

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