Patent ID: 6369892
Filing Date: 2002-04-09
Classification: G01N

Abstract:
A method for measuring maturity of a unit of produce, comprisingmoving the unit of produce past a sensing station along a conveying path; separating the image of the unit of produce received at the sensing station into electromagnetic spectral images; measuring the cross-sectional area of the image of the unit of produce in a spectral range indicative of the presence of the image of the unit of produce at the sensor independently of the color of the unit of produce; accumulating the total magnitude of at least one selected electromagnetic spectral range of the image of the unit of produce which deviates from a fixed ratio with the measure cross-sectional area as a function of maturity of the unit of produce; comparing the total magnitude of the at least one selected electromagnetic spectral range of the unit of produce and the calculated cross-sectional area of the unit of produce with a feature estimation algorithm; successively passing images of juxtaposed thin portions of the product unit through a slit, separating different electromagnetic spectral images including successively passing the images of the thin portions of the product unit from the slit through a prism to spread the spectrum of the images perpendicularly to the major dimensions of the images; successively digitizing the magnitudes of the spread images by a CCD camera in pixels, the measuring of the cross-sectional area including summing the pixels of the images of the unit of produce, the accumulating the total magnitude including measuring the magnitude of the filtered electromagnetic spectral range of each pixel of the images of the unit of produce and summing the measured magnitudes.