Yucatán Student develops program to classify fruits

Merida, Mexico, May 16 (Notimex) .- The automation of fruit selection process by color and to determine their maturity just by taking a cellphone picture is possible now due to the development of a product based on histograms.

Under the name of “tomatoes sorter by color histograms" Guillermo Moo Ku, from the Metropolitan Technological University (UTM, for its acronym in Spanish), developed a program to classify, fruit mainly, by its color.

The student of Information Technology Engineering said that this program uses histograms, "images that are like a fingerprint displayed by any object, according to its color and size, etc."

He explained that the program is based on the famous Naive Bayes algorithms; this project can also be used to determine the history of a vehicle by just taking a photograph of the plates, even recognize faces.

This plan, he said, "needs to take a photo of the object itself. Once we have the image we load it into our system and store it in a database. The more information (pictures) it has, the faster the classification process is. "

"The project lacks of a graphical interface, because the idea is to install it in robots, which will have a camera and will be connected to a conveyor belt. As the tomato passes by the picture is taken and sends it to a classified box, according to its color and they will be ready for export, "he said.

Currently, he added, this process is manual and time consuming; therefore making the classifications under this scheme can increase productivity.

He stressed that by feeding the database is possible that the program recognizes the maturity of the product, moisture, or even to calculate weight, information attached to reality.

This, he said, is the first phase of the project, aimed at small producer, but it can be used by industries and even be applied as mobile technology and just take a cellphone picture of a tomato from the supermarket in order to know its ripeness.

He said the costs are relatively low, because the program can be loaded into a small tablet, with costs between one thousand and one thousand two hundred pesos. The scheme not only classifies tomatoes, but other fruits as well.

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