PROCESS AND ARRANGEMENT FOR OPTICAL QUALITY CONTROL AND/OR CLASSIFICATION OF PLANTS.

摘要

For the automatic optical quality control and/or classification of plants, an electronic colour camera takes a picture of a plant from above and an electronic half-tone camera takes a picture of the plant from the side. The electric image signals provided by each camera are digitised and evaluated by an image computer to determine characteristics of the plant. The height of the plant, in particular, can be found via the half-tone camera. Each camera has a light source. In order to prevent the mutual impairment of the images and their evaluation, each camera is preferably so constructed that it is insensitive to the light from the light source allocated to the other one. Mutual impairment can also be avoided by causing a control circuit to switch the two light sources on alternately and trigger the pictures taken of the plant by each camera at a time at which only the light source allocated to the camera is switched on.