• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.197-205
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• 2010

An automatic echelon feeder of brown rice was presented for quality inspection system using color image processing. A echelon feeder was developed with vibratory feeder and cylindrical indent singulator having oblique light. The vibratory feeder consisted of a hopper, electromagnetic vibrator and multichannel grooves and supply the grain sample to the singulator. The feeding performance such as feed rate, blocking frequency of the channel was dependent on the size of groove and vibration pattern. A cylindrical indent singulator consisted of a rotating cylinder, prisms and a tungsten-halogen light source. It delivered grain kernels under the camera in a echelon form and illuminate the kernels with oblique ray and ambient light. The size of the indents installed on the surface of the rotating cylinder was determined by the dimensions of the paddy and a small triangular prism was placed in each indent to apply $ 20^{\circ}$ oblique light to the grain kernel.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.138-145
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• 2010

An on-line algorithm that discriminates brown rice kernels on their echelon feeder using color image processing is presented for quality inspection. A rapid color image segmentation algorithm based on Bayesian clustering method was developed by means of the look-up table which was made from the significant clusters selected by experts. A robust estimation method was presented to improve the stability of color clusters. Discriminant analysis of color distributions was employed to distinguish nine types of brown rice kernels. Discrimination accuracies of the on-line discrimination algorithm were ranged from 72% to 85% for the sound, cracked, green-transparent and green-opaque, greater than 93% for colored, red, and unhulled, about 92% for white-opaque and 67% for chalky, respectively.