| 摘要 |
<p>This invention relates to apparatus for automatically grading and sorting articles, especially fruit, according to size, surface blemish and surface color. Prior art automatic processes have resulted in incomplete grading and are incapable of providing certain important information such as abrupt variations of blemishes and size related information. The present invention provides an improved apparatus and method for grading and sorting articles, particularly fruit, according to size, surface blemish and surface color. Fruit is passed sequentially through a camera array which scans the surface of each fruit and measures the intensity of light reflected from successive discrete surface segments, Significant differences between such measured intensities are detected and a measurement of surface blemish is generated in accordance therewith. Size measurements are derived by counting the total number of segments in the surface of each fruit, Color measurements are derived by averaging the ratio of red light intensity to infrared light intensity reflected from each of a plurality of surface areas of each fruit. The fruit are separated and delivered to separate receivers by a mechanism responsive to the size, blemish and color measurements of the respective fruit.</p> |
