Development of novel prototype of orange sorting machine

Orange is one of the most popular fruits in the world. Oranges originate from Southeast Asia, India, and southern China. Nowadays, they are grown in warm regions around the world. Oranges are consumed either fresh or in the form of fruit juice. Depending on the type of orange, when ripe, its surface is orange or green, with a sweet or slightly sour taste. In Vietnam, oranges have significant export value. Therefore, ensuring consistent quality of oranges before export is an important requirement. Currently in Vietnam, this process is done manually or semi-automatically, resulting in low productivity and inadequate output for export purposes. This article introduces a new design of an automatic orange sorting machine. The proposed machine is equipped with functions to classify the size and defects on the orange surface through image processing technique. The experiment results show that the proposed machine works effectively. The size sorting module worked perfectly with absolute accuracy while the image processing module ensures the confidence level of 95%. The proposed machine could replace the manual sorting process with high accuracy.