For our assignment, we were given Adafruit's VL53L0X rangefinder, which can sense how far away someone is to a distance of about 2 or 3 feet, and an IR beam break sensor. After some brainstorming, we decided we should play to the strengths of the rangefinder, which is that it can detect exactly how far away someone is, an advantage it has over the beam break sensor which only knows if something has broken the beam or not. We settled on the idea of a bathroom door lets users easily tell if someone is inside the toilet without you having to say or touch anything: if someone approaches the door and the toilet is empty, it automatically opens for you. If the toilet is occupied, it flashes a warning light to let you know.
For our very rough prototype we used some cardboard props to simulate the toilet and the door. We attached a panel of cardboard to a servo motor to act as our door, and put the beam break sensors on either side of a "toilet" to simulate someone sitting down.
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