Proposal of whole surface inspection system by simultaneous six-image capture of prolate spheroid-shaped fruit and vegetables

Up to now, most fruit and vegetables are sorted manually by visual comparison with a standard table. Manual sorting of fruit and vegetables causes long and tough work every harvest and the individual difference of sorting criteria. To overcome the problems, we have proposed a whole surface inspection system of fruit and vegetables with uniform selection criteria especially for prolate spheroid-shaped ones. The proposed system is constructed by a sensor-driven independent conveyance system, which separates one target from the group of them. After the whole surface of the separated target is captured using six cameras, the size, the shape, and the bruise of the target are inspected by using the captured images, respectively. In this paper, the inspection ability of the proposed system is evaluated and analyzed by using red and green bell peppers and yellow paprika.