Potato Grading System for Peru Research and Development Centre (CID-FIEE) - National University of Engineering Lima – Peru B.Sc. Doris Dixie Pastor Torres Abstract: An image Processing System was developed for sorting whole potatoes according to size, shape and presence of mechanical damages in their skin. Key words: Agro industry, Inspection, Image acquisition System, Artificial Vision. I.Introduction: Because of its adaptability to a wide range of uses and the growing demand of potato with specific characteristics for processed products like potatoes for the fresh market, fast food and snacks. The farmers have the necessity to sort the potatoes before selling it, but in developing countries like Peru, farmers sort this product manually and in hard conditions, a lot of workers in this area are women, old people and even children. During the process of selection they should carry all the time a bag where the “good potatoes” were collected and they put the bag away only when it is totally full. The health, safety and welfare of farmers are vital assets for the sustainable development of the potato subsector. For those reasons a System to sort potatoes according to the requirements for the snacks potatoes industry in the coast of Peru has been developed. II.Method: The following pictures give a representation of an Artificial Vision System. An acquisition image system takes the picture automatically and the software based on Spacial and Frecuency domain processing decides the suitable potatoes for the Snacks Potato Industrie. Image AcquisitionImage processing - noise elimination Hotelling Transform Shape and Size Detection of surface Imperfections/ mechanical damages Contrast-stretching Transformation functions V.Conclusion: We can develop our own technology in order to satisfy the needs of the local industry but because of the lack of resources those kind of projects take to much time, in those cases it is intersting the development of technology transfer projects i.e. Germany – Peru. III.Results: In order to test out the efficient of the algorithms a prototype was developed, it consist of an illumination System with a digital camera, a conveyor belt, the hardware for the automatic detection of the potatoes and a graphic interface, where the results of the process are shown. The system was tested with 914 potatoes and the efficient is 95,2%. Histogram of the imagen data Connected- Components Labeling 1-Dimensional representation of potatoes shape Compute fast Fourier transform to get the pattern vectors of the potato shapes Spectral components – Pattern Vectors Cracks or imperfections recognittion based on their morphology Image Segmentation IV.Discussion: The use of a camera with a better features make the image processing easier. In addition, two digital cameras should be used in a future work. This kind of machines should be used in a potatoes stockpile center not direct in farm. This is a PC-Based System, in a future work the algorithms should be implemented in a digital signal processing DSP. Graphic Interface First Prototype: Sorting Potatoes System