Abstract
Most of the seeds of cucurbitaceous rootstock species used for grafting were mainly sown by hand. This study was carried out to develop an on-line discriminating algorithm of seed direction using machine vision and an automatic seeding system. The seeding system was composed of a supplying device, feeding device, machine vision system, reversing device, seeding device and system control section. Machine vision was composed of a color CCD camera, frame grabber, image inspection chamber, lighting and personal computer. The seed image was segmented into a region of seed part and background part using thresholding technique in which H value of HSI color coordinate system. A seed direction was discriminated by comparing position between the center of circumscribed rectangle to a seed and the center of seed image. It took about 49ms to identify and redirect seed. Line-up status of seed was good the more than 95% of a sowed seed. Seeding capacity of this system was shown to be 10,140 grains per hour, which is three times faster than that of a typical worker.