| 摘要 |
PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To sort long agricultural products without damaging them and to miniaturize the sorting apparatus by installing holding means for holding long agricultural products such as spring onions in a selecting conveyer, sorting the products during the upper face transportation of the products based on imaging process, and transferring the products to a plurality of sorting conveyers during the lower face transportation. SOLUTION: Spring onions whose outer skins are peeled by an automatic skin- peeling apparatus 1 are put one by one on a holding mechanism 25 attached to a selecting conveyer 8 by a worker 10 waiting on a throwing work stand 11 to be transported. During the upper face transportation, each onion 9 is photographed by an image reading apparatus 4 and the grade of each onion is determined by a grade judging apparatus 5 based on the width of each spring onion and the boundary position of the soft white part and the leaf part and the curved degree of the photographed image. Based on the judgment result (sorting information), when each spring onion is transported on the lower face to prescribed dropping positions of a plurality of sorting conveyers 22, which are at right angles to the sorting conveyer 8 and installed in the number corresponding to the number of the sorting grades, the holding mechanism 25 is released to drop each spring onion to the corresponding sorting conveyers 22.
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