Influence of initial orientations on potato conveyor trajectories by machine vision

Abstract Conveyor transfer is one of the main transportation ways in potato production processing. The conveyor trajectory is a complex function of object size, shape, initial speed and so on. Potato trajectories are important to settle camera orientation when potato qualities were detected after discharging from a moving conveyor. Besides, action unit of the removal system and installation location of an unloading conveyor was influenced by the potato trajectories. The goal of this study was to investigate initial orientation influence on potato trajectories at different initial speeds by using quadratic coefficients. It was found that the potato trajectories were influenced significantly by initial orientations. Further, the influence extent was related to initial speeds. The influence was decreasing with initial speeds increasing, and there would be a relatively stable state as initial speed higher than 2.0 m/s. Calculation methods of guide mechanism length and installation location of the unloading conveyor were presented. The guide mechanism length was 200 mm at falling height 200 mm, and the x-coordinate of the unloading conveyor at falling height 400 mm was 174 mm when the initial orientation influence was ignored at initial speed 1.0 m/s.