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Robotization in fruit grading system

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Sensing and Instrumentation for Food Quality and Safety Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

A grading robot system, which automatically provides fruits from containers and inspects all sides of the fruits was developed. The robot system consists of two fruit providing robots and a grading robot. Both robots had 3 DOF Cartesian coordinate manipulators, and 12 suction pads as end-effectors for transporting fruits. The grading robot had 12 color TV cameras, and 28 lighting devices as a machine vision system. The grading robot sucked 12 fruits up at a time and 12 bottom images of all the fruits were acquired during the manipulator moving from a halfway stage to carriers on a conveyor line. Before releasing the fruits to the carriers, 4 side images of each fruit were acquired by rotating the suction pads for 270°. The stroke of the manipulators was about 1.2 m and it took about 4.3 s to move back to the initial position that meant that this robot could grade three fruits per second. This grading robot system made following effects: (1) Labor substitution, (2) Objective grading operation without human subjective judgment, (3) Data accumulation on fruit grading for traceability and farming guidance to producer.

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Acknowledgments

This fruit grading robot system was developed when the author belonged to Ishii Co., Ltd. (Currently SI Seiko Co., Ltd., Matsuyama, Ehime, Japan) in 2002. The author expresses sincere gratitude to SI Seiko company men who worked together for this project, to persons of JA Shimoina (Iida, Nagano, Japan) who provided many sample fruits, and to all the people who were involved in this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kyoto University, Kitashirakawa-Oiwakecho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8502, Japan

    Naoshi Kondo

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  1. Naoshi Kondo
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Correspondence to Naoshi Kondo.

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Kondo, N. Robotization in fruit grading system. Sens. & Instrumen. Food Qual. 3, 81–87 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11694-008-9065-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11694-008-9065-x

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