Automated Ration Vending Machine

Abstract: The Public Distribution System (PDS), established by the Government of India under Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food, and Public Distribution to distribute grocery items to poor people at fair price is facing significant threats to its very existence. These threats starts from the basic issues of renewing the ration card every year which has to be done manually by the employees to the malpractices done by the ration store dealers like diverting food grains to open market to make profits. There is another problem of irregularity in opening shops and false announcements of deficit in food grains. Hence through this paper the idea is to completely automate the rationing system. For simplicity, it is better to implement an embedded system for the same. In the proposed system, the advanced ARM8 (Advanced RISC Machine) processor is used and it is the heart of the system that controls all sub systems like sensor modules, database systems, connected across it. The user authentication is provided by smart card (RFID card). The Customer/ user can access his/her ration through this diverse smart card.

Keywords: ARM8 Processor, Public Distribution System, RFID card