A spot-type defect detection and colour identification system for agricultural produce

A high-speed system in which color detection is one aspect of an overall quality inspection process for agricultural produce is undergoing development. In a typical application, the system can sort and route tomatoes to many output grades according to their ripeness and size. A CCD (charge-coupled device) color television camera inspects the produce passing on a conveyor of rotating rollers. Color quality is determined by using a three-dimensional lookup table to identify spatial areas which contain a color of interest. The lookup table defines 262, 132 unique colors. Special spot-type defect detection algorithms have been developed to distinguish between diffused color which is spread throughout the entire surface area of an object and color clusters which are concentrated in a much smaller area