Three-independent axis instrumented sphere for compression measurement based on piezoelectric transducers

Fruit and vegetable losses that occur after the harvest and transportation are related to a plurality of different factors but the primary causes are mechanical damages that occur due to impact, compression, and vibration. Every day, tons of foods are lost due to bad handling, transportation and storage. These losses must be avoided and the development of electronic devices that are able to detect and quantify them is an honorable task. Previous studies were done and revealed damages along the harvest and post processes. It is imperative to control all the harvest and transportation chain in order to avoid damages. Unfortunately, the previously developed devices presented high production costs, not permitting large scale production. The desirable situation is the development of low cost sensor devices to be deployed in every packing house, transportation, and storage unit to track the damages up to the final consumer. In this paper, a low cost instrumented sphere that acts like a pseudo fruit is proposed. The device is an evolution of previous works and it is based in low cost piezoelectric sensors, able to quantify compression forces. The evaluation results confirm the feasibility of these sensors and the entire purpose of this work.