Abstract: A fruit or other produce orienting device, particularly suited for orienting apples, orients a piece of fruit with its stem axis horizontal so that it can undergo quality inspections. The device employs a cylindrical drive roller which engages the fruit on one side, and causes it to rotate, and a pair of freely rotating orienting rollers which engage the fruit across from the drive roller, and cause the fruit to achieve the desired orientation as it rotates. The first orienting roller is cone shaped with a tapered flat or concave surface so that it will steer the fruit toward the second, opposing roller, which has a thin disk shaped portion with a front surface that engages the fruit. The front surface of the disk shaped portion tends to align itself with the flat edge of the fruit at its stem or calyx end, and this causes the rotating fruit to be oriented quickly with its stem axis parallel to the roller axes, and then maintains the fruit in the correct orientation once it is achieved.

Abstract: An image processing technique for detecting and measuring the size of bruises on fruit, such as apples, is disclosed. A line scan camera is employed to obtain a gray level image of each piece of fruit as it is rotated in front of the camera. The image is digitized, and transferred to a computer which performs a plurality of steps on the image to determine the sizes of any bruises on the fruit from the gray level data. The image data is filtered to remove interference due to pixel-to-pixel variations in the camera, background noise, etc., and is then thresholded to obtain a binary image representation. Clusters of zeros in the resulting binary image that are representative of potential bruises are analyzed to determine their size and shape. If the shape of the cluster is nearly circular, it is determined to be a bruise. From this information, the amount of bruise area on the fruit may be determined, and the fruit graded accordingly.

Abstract: An improved high capacity harvesting apparatus is disclosed which includes means for rotating an article collecting bin about its central vertical axis as articles are continuously supplied adjacent the central bottom portion of the bin, and for automatically incrementally lowering the bin relative to the article supply means in accordance with the formation of successive layers of articles in the bottom of the bin. Preferably grabber discharge means of the parallel spaced reciprocatory jaw type are provided for gently supplying the articles to the bin. Improved padded roller elevator means are provided for supplying the articles to the grabber discharge means at a relatively high rate from one or more article sources.

Abstract: An improved high capacity harvesting apparatus is disclosed which includes means for rotating an article collecting bin about its central vertical axis as articles are continuously supplied adjacent the central bottom portion of the bin, and for automatically incrementally lowering the bin relative to the article supply means in accordance with the formation of successive layers of articles in the bottom of the bin. Preferably grabber discharge means of the parallel spaced reciprocatory jaw type are provided for gently supplying the articles to the bin. Improved padded roller elevator means are provided for supplying the articles to the grabber discharge means at a relatively high rate from one or more article sources.