Rotten fruit detection and sorting using OpenCV

Quality inspection of fruits and vegetables has been a vast topic for ages and it is not an easy task for developing countries. The topic gets even more important since Pakistan is an agricultural country and the export of fruits and vegetables contributes a lot to its economy. Due to humidity and c

Project Title

Rotten fruit detection and sorting using OpenCV

Project Area of Specialization

Robotics

Project Summary

Quality inspection of fruits and vegetables has been a vast topic for ages and it is not an easy task for developing countries. The topic gets even more important since Pakistan is an agricultural country and the export of fruits and vegetables contributes a lot to its economy. Due to humidity and climatic changes, rotten and ripped fruits cannot be identified easily through manual procedures and requires great human effort. For this purpose, a system is proposed that can identify rotten fruits in bulk quantity. Detection of rotten vegetables and fruits is an essential task, and time-consuming as well, for the retailers who sell these products. The supply of fresh and healthy fruits and vegetables improves business and profit. Manual identification of rotten items is a great hassle and time-consuming. At the same time, human negligence plays an important role in supplying rotten fruits and vegetables with fresh ones. This project aims to provide an efficient, less-expensive system that can identify rotten fruits without human intervention. This also provides an opportunity for the retailer to determine the ratio of healthy and rotten fruits and overall productivity for better cost-benefit analysis. This project would be helpful in terms of agriculture development. As agriculture is the basic aspect in terms of industries and it needs to be improved for better health, production and social betterment.

Project Objectives

The key objectives of our system are to provide an inexpensive, efficient, and portable Fruit Sorting Machine. The machine is fully automated through which rotten fruits can be identified and separated from fresh quality fruits without any human intervention. Since the machine is portable, it can be installed, operated and maintained with great ease. Moreover, quantitative analysis may be performed on the batches of fruits e.g. percentage of rotten fruits can be calculated out of an obtained batch of fruits, overall productivity etc. The technology used is not intrusive i.e. image processing technique is used and there is practically no need to touch /process the fruits physically for their quality inspection.

Project Implementation Method

The project essentially contains three modules:

Mechanical Workbench Module: this module consists of a conveyor belt upon which the fruits, being inspected, are placed and processed in an efficient and continuous manner.

Image Processing Module: This is the main module and is responsible to acquire the video of the fruits that are placed on a mechanical workbench and passed through a multi-camera vision system. OpenCV will be installed on Raspberry Pi. Camera modules will be used along with it to capture videos of the fruits. The module then processes the video and detects the rotten fruits through the use of image processing techniques. As a consequence, the module issues the necessary control signal to a robotic arm to carry out the intended task.

Robotic Arm: the robotic arm is controlled by the image processing system that issues the essential control signal to physically separate the rotten fruits from the fresh ones. Upon receiving the specific signals, the robotic arm picks the rotten fruits from the conveyor belt and places these fruits in a collection bag.

Benefits of the Project

The main benefits of the project are:

To improve the productivity of supplying healthy fruits to the market/consumers since the system is fully automated and does not require any human intervention.

The machine is portable and can be installed and operated in a small area making it feasible for use in small areas like rooms and small warehouses.

The machine has a very low maintenance cost as no complex equipment is used in the development.

Moreover, the system also helps the retailers in increasing the market/consumer trust in the supplied fruits as these fruits may further be used in making products like juices, bakery items etc. Directly, it has a positive impact on the related business opportunities.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

As the system consists of three modules, the deliverables are based on these modules.

A conveyor belt is mounted on a mechanical workbench so that fruits may be passed through the vision system.

The image processing module consists of two high-resolution cameras connected individually with two Raspberry Pi systems to capture and process the video. The image processing module would be developed in Python using the OpenCV library.

A robotic arm is responsible to pick the rotten fruits to separate them from healthier fruits.

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Core Industry

Food

Other Industries

Agriculture

Core Technology

Robotics

Other Technologies

Sustainable Development Goals

Good Health and Well-Being for People, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Responsible Consumption and Production

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com