Development of a machine vision based oyster meat sorter

Oyster meats are currently sorted by hand using volume as the sorting parameter. Hand grading is inaccurate, time consuming and costly. Previous research on physical properties of oyster meats showed a high correlation between projected area of oyster meats and their volume thus allowing the use of projected area measurements as a sorting criterion. A machine vision based oyster meat sorting machine was developed to mechanize the sorting process. The machine consists of a dark conveyor belt transporting singulated oysters through a grading station and then along a row of fast acting water jet valves which separates the stream of oysters into 3 classes. The vision system consists of a monochrome television camera, flash light illumination to "freeze" the images, a digitizer/transmitter and a Personal Computer as an image processing unit. Software synchronizes the flash light and digitization of images and calculates projected area of each meat using the planimeter method. The grading results are sent to a valve control board which actuates the spray valves. The sorting rate is 37 oyster meats/min with a sorting accuracy of 87.5%. A description of the design work, adjustment and l calibration procedures and a final sorting test is included.