A Low-Cost System for Moisture Content Detection of Bagasse upon a Conveyor Belt with Multispectral Image and Various Machine Learning Methods

This research aimed to propose an online system based on multispectral images for the real-time estimation of the moisture content (MC) of sugarcane bagasse. The system consisted of a conveyor belt, four halogen bulbs, and a multispectral camera. The MC models were developed using machine learning algorithms, i.e., multiple linear regression (MLR), principal component regression (PCR), artificial neural network (ANN), PCA-ANN, Gaussian process regression (GPR), PCA-GPR, random forest regression (RFR), and PCA-GPR. The models were developed using 150 samples (calibration set) meanwhile the remaining 50 samples were applied as a validation set. The comparison of all developed models showed that the PCA-RFR model achieved better detection with a higher accuracy of MC prediction. The PCA-RFR model showed the best results which were a coefficient of determination of prediction (r2) of 0.72, root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) of 11.82 wt%, and a ratio of the standard error of prediction to standard deviation (RPD) of 1.85. The results show that this technique was very useful for MC rapid screening of the sugarcane bagasse.