MULTI-CHANNEL VISION SYSTEM FOR ON-LINE QUANTIFICATION OF APPEARANCE QUALITY FACTORS OF APPLE

An integrated on-line inspection system was constructed with seven cameras, half mirrors to split images, 720 nm and 970 nm band pass filters, illumination chamber having several tungsten-halogen lamps, one main computer, one color frame grabber, two 4-channel multiplexors, and flat plate conveyer, etc., so that a total of seven images, that is, one color image from the top side of an apple and two B/W images from each side (top, right and left) could be captured and displayed on a computer monitor through the multiplexor. One of the two B/W images captured from each side is 720nm filter image and the other is 970nm. With this system an on-line grading software was developed to evaluate appearance quality. On-line test results to the Fuji apples that were manually fed on the conveyer showed that grading accuracies of the color, defective and shape were 95.3%, 86% and 91%, respectively. Grading time was 0.35 sec per apple on an average. Therefore, this on-line grading system could be used for inspection of the final products produced from an apple sorting system.