ELECTRONIC VISION AND USES IN AUTOMATIC HANDLING OF AGRICULTURAL MATERIALS

Sorting machines of fruits are mostly used in the industries. The process of sorting started by detecting the color of the fruits to indicate its classification based on the color of the fruit. In this work, a fruit sorting machine has been designed and built for small scale industries needing low cost compared to those now being used, which are expensive. This quest focuses on sorting the different types of fruits such as apples, tomatoes, and navel orange which are green and red. The fruits are put on a small belt and then entered through a box with a controlled lighting Red- Green- Blue color sensor. The controlled lighting is in a closed space with a servo motor which rotates 130 degree and returns to zero position. Attached to it, a gate pushes the fruit to the line of correct color and RGB color sensor to make scanning, integrated with Red and non-Red (Green) Light Emitting Diode (RGB LED), to detect the color of the fruit. Study also includes productivity, efficiency and costs were determined.    Results revealed the following - The productivity is arranged from low to high as follows: tomatoes (27.3: 61.2 kg/h), apples (34.1: 76.5 kg/h), and navel orange (68.1: 153 kg/h). - The efficiency of sorting was as follows: tomatoes was 96 %  at the lowest belt speed and increased to 100 % at the mean belt speed 0.8 m/s then decreased to 94 % at the highest speed, apples was 95 %  at the lowest belt speed and increased to 100 % at the mean belt speed 0.8 m/s then decreased to  91.25 % at the highest speed, and navel orange was 95 %  at the lowest belt speed and increased to 100 % at the mean belt speed 0.8 m/s then decreased to 80 % at the highest speed. - The most suitable belt speed was 0.8 m/s with very small delay time of servo motor which gives the highest efficiency of sorting within free flowing conditions. The sorting process cost by using the developed machine was less than the manual process in case of navel orange, tomatoes and apples. Using the developed sorting machine reduced the cost of fruits sorting to 1: 2.23 as compared with manual method in navel orange, and to 1 : 1.12 for apples, but it was more expensive sorting tomatoes by the developed machine compared with manual sorting of 12%.