In-Line Sorting of Processed Fruit Using Computer Vision

Nowadays, there is a growing demand for quality fruits and vegetables that are simple to prepare and consume, like minimally processed fruits. These products have to accomplish some particular characteristics to make them more attractive to the consumers, like a similar appearance and the total absence of external defects. Although recent advances in machine vision have allowed for the automatic inspection of fresh fruit and vegetables, there are no commercially available equipments for sorting of minority processed fruits, like arils of pomegranate (Punica granatum L) or segments of Satsuma mandarin (Citrus unshiu) ready to eat. This work describes a complete solution based on machine vision for the automatic inspection and classification of these fruits based on their estimated quality. The classification is based on morphological and colour features estimated from images taken in-line, and their analysis using statistical methods in order to grade the fruit into commercial categories.