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InVision 3.5
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INVISION 3.5 USER GUIDE
Table of Contents
Page
Section 1 – Getting Started...............................................................................................6
About InVision ...............................................................................................................7
Key Concepts ..............................................................................................................11
Setting up and Using InVision .....................................................................................16
Starting InVision ..........................................................................................................17
Changing Security Access Levels...............................................................................18
Exiting and Shutting Down InVision ............................................................................19
Main Menu, Toolbar and Status Bar ...........................................................................20
Section 2 – Creating and Testing a Basic Variety ........................................................25
About the Variety and Offline Screens ........................................................................26
Steps Required to Set Up a Variety in InVision ..........................................................30
Create the Variety .......................................................................................................31
Set up Grade Grid Characteristics ..............................................................................34
Create the Color Map ..................................................................................................37
Set up Grade Grid Grades and Values .......................................................................43
Test and Fine Tune the Variety ...................................................................................49
The Variety and Offline Screen Toolbar Options ........................................................51
The Variety and Offline Status Bar .............................................................................54
Section 3 – InVision Screens and Windows .................................................................55
Status Screen ..............................................................................................................56
Variety and Offline Screens ........................................................................................57
Select Fruit Variety window options .................................................................................. 57
Fruit Variety Information window options .......................................................................... 59
Blemish Grading Parameters tab options ......................................................................... 64
Texture Grading Parameters tab options .......................................................................... 68
Video Screen...............................................................................................................70
Alarms Screen .............................................................................................................71
Images Screen ............................................................................................................72
Info Screen ..................................................................................................................72
Iris Setting Window .....................................................................................................75
Fruit Limits Screen ......................................................................................................82
Vision Dialog Pop-ups .................................................................................................83
Section 4 – Advanced Grading - Concepts and Grading Options ..............................85
Summary of Grading Options .....................................................................................86
Getting Started with Advanced Grading......................................................................89
How InVision Grades ........................................................................................................ 89
Select Category (and Characteristics) window options ..................................................... 91
The Grade Grid Right-click Menu ..................................................................................... 94
Guidelines for Grading ................................................................................................96
Setting Cut-off Point Values for Grading ........................................................................... 96
Overlapping values ........................................................................................................... 96
Criterion Linking ................................................................................................................ 96
Grade Title Colorization .................................................................................................... 98
Grading on "Good" produce color versus "Bad" produce color ......................................... 99
Using the Histogram data to fine-tune cut-off point values ............................................. 100
Avoiding Gaps between Grades ..................................................................................... 102
Using ‘OR’ Condition Grading ......................................................................................... 103
Special Advanced Features - Power Settings and Seed Editing .................................... 107
Using Captured Images to Refine Grading ...............................................................109
Capturing Single Pieces of Sample Produce .................................................................. 109
Understanding the Fruit Capture Grid Toolbar and Fields .............................................. 110
Capturing a Random Sample of Produce Images .......................................................... 112
About Viewing (and Saving) Captured Produce Images ................................................. 112
Setting up Capture options ............................................................................................. 113
Capturing Images Automatically for Grading Analysis .................................................... 116
Advanced Color Grading Options .............................................................................117
Grading using Function Color (or Uniform Color) ........................................................... 117
Grading on Color Combinations ..................................................................................... 126
Grading using 'Ignore' Fruit Color Mode (for fruit with labels) ......................................... 128
Less Frequently Used Grading Options ....................................................................129
Grading by Lanes (using Quality by Lane) ...................................................................... 129
Grading by Quality and Grade Optimization ................................................................... 130
Grading More than One Variety: Using Split Vision ..................................................137
Section 5 – Dimension (Size and Shape) Grading .....................................................139
About Dimension Grading .........................................................................................140
Grading By Size (Diameter and Volume) ..................................................................141
Grading by Shape .....................................................................................................145
‘Special’ Grades to Resolve Imaging and Positioning Problems ..............................152
More about working with Doubled or Touching Produce ..........................................156
Fruit Variety Options that affect Size and Shape Grading ........................................158
Size and Shape Grading Diagnostics .......................................................................161
Section 6 – Blemish (or Blob) Grading ........................................................................162
About Blemish Grading .............................................................................................163
Setting up your Variety to perform Blemish Grading ................................................165
Section 7 – Texture Grading .........................................................................................192
About Texture Grading ..............................................................................................193
Texture grading for Orange Puff and Crease (by classifying images) ......................195
Texture grading for Kiwifruit Botrytis (by classifying pixels) ......................................199
Texture grading for Kiwifruit Scale (by classifying pixels) .........................................201
To view the texture diagnostics .................................................................................204
Section 8 – Monitoring and Managing Your Processing ...........................................206
Viewing the System Status Screen ...........................................................................207
Viewing Captured Produce in the Images Screen ....................................................209
Viewing Live Video ....................................................................................................228
Viewing Information for Graded Produce (Info Screen) ............................................230
Viewing Graphs in InVision .......................................................................................232
Working with Alarms .................................................................................................233
Viewing Log Files of InVision Data ...........................................................................242
Using the Diagnostics Menu .....................................................................................243
Printing InVision Data................................................................................................244
Exporting InVision Data.............................................................................................244
Backing Up or Restoring InVision Data.....................................................................245
Appendix A – Tutorials .................................................................................................246
Tutorial 1: Create a Simple Two Color Variety ........................................................247
Part 1 - Create a Variety and a Simple Color Map .......................................................... 248
Part 2 - Capture Fruit and Set Up the Grade Grid .......................................................... 261
Part 3 - Run More Captures and Fine Tune the Grading ................................................ 267
Tutorial 2: Create a More Complex 3 Color Variety (and a Color Combination) .....273
Part 1 - Review the Grading ........................................................................................... 275
Part 2 - Change the Color Mapping ................................................................................ 278
Overview
This Section provides an overview to starting up and using InVision systems.
In this Section
Page
About InVision .................................................................................................... 7
Key Concepts ................................................................................................... 11
Setting up and Using InVision .......................................................................... 16
Starting InVision ............................................................................................... 17
Changing Security Access Levels .................................................................... 18
Exiting and Shutting Down InVision ................................................................. 19
Main Menu, Toolbar and Status Bar ................................................................. 20
About InVision
Introduction
Compac Sorting Equipment’s InVision system takes images of produce being processed
by the sorting machine.
The images are analyzed to identify the visual characteristics that can be sorted on (such
as color, size and shape). After analysis, the grade and size of each piece of produce is
sent to the Compac Sizer software which then delivers the graded produce to the
appropriate outlet.
Please note:
Wherever the term "fruit" in used in this documentation or in the User Interface, it is used
as a generic term to refer to any type of produce that is run over your sorter. This
includes both fruit and vegetables.
Computer Electronics
1st Roller 2nd Roller
System Power Supply
Rotation Rotation
Unit
MLS 500 Sorter Machine Sections - Side View (with InVision 7000/9000 series option)
Carrier
Carrier Righter
Washer
Sensor Bar
All TIp
Brush Drops
Ramps
Chutes
Camera Cabinet Main
Weigh Drive
Bridge
Upper Lights
Lower Lights Cross
Conveyors
TGV Divider and Outlets
Load Belts
Software
PC
Singulation Inspection
Section Section
MLS 500 Sorter Machine - Detailed Top View (with InVision 7000/9000 series option)
InVision series
There are three InVision series: 5000, 7000 and 9000.
• 5000 has 1 camera viewing 2 lanes from the top only, with a resolution of
approximately 1 pixel per mm. This configuration is good for grading on color, size
(diameters and volume) and shape.
• 7000 has 2 cameras viewing 2 lanes from top only, with a resolution of 2 pixels per
mm. This configuration is good for blemish grading on elongated fruit (kiwifruit,
lemons) that will orient in a predictable way on our conveyor, plus it has all the
capabilities of the 5000 series.
• 9000 has 2 cameras viewing 1 lane from top and sides, with a resolution of 2 pixels
per mm. This configuration is good for blemish grading on any produce, plus it has
all the capabilities of the 5000 series.
InVision models
There are 3 InVision models in each series: C, IR and CIR. The models indicate the type
of camera that is used.
• C uses Color cameras only. This model is used for color and size and shape grading;
blemish and texture grading for citrus and other produce where Infrared (IR) cameras
have not been proven to be useful.
• IR uses Infrared cameras only. (Infrared cameras provide images in shades of grey -
similar to monochrome.) This model is used for size grading only, and only on series
5000 – i.e. 5000IR).
• CIR uses both Color and Infrared cameras. This model is used on 5000 series to
enhance the size and shape grading for dark produce that is hard to see properly with
color cameras only; and on 7000 and 9000 series for blemish grading on fruit with
thin skin (apples, kiwifruit) where the IR camera can be used to detect punctures and
other severe damage.
Configurations
Even though all these configurations can be supported, only a limited number are
recommended for use. In the 5000 series all 3 models are available; in the 7000 series
we only recommend 7000CIR (for kiwifruit); and in the 9000 series both C and CIR are
used, depending upon the varieties of produce to be graded.
All new CIR machines will now be using a synchronized cameras option, where pictures
are taken simultaneously from both the color and the IR camera to create a merged
image. This feature is referred to as “pixel-matched”. This gives significant advantage
in detecting stems on apples. Older CIR machines without synchronization may be
upgraded by adding some required hardware. Contact your local representative if you
wish to explore this option.
Note: InVision 7000 and 9000 series models can also provide a Texture grading feature
in some circumstances. Texture grading has proven useful for detecting puff and crease
on citrus (using color images). It can also be useful with kiwifruit for detecting Botrytis
(using IR images).
InVision grading
InVision sends information to the Sizer software for every carrier it sees.
If the carrier contains a piece of produce, then InVision sends:
• a grade (for blemish and color)
• two diameters (referred to as "major" and "minor")
• a volume.
If the carrier has no produce, then InVision advises Sizer of an “empty carrier”.
InVision determines a grade using the visual characteristics of the produce. These
characteristics are grouped into Categories. Fruit Categories and Characteristics
enable grading to be set up for many features including:
• Color
Color grading sorts produce into grades so that each grade has a consistent color
quality. For example Grade A may be all orange, Grade B may be orange with a little
yellow, and Grade C may be orange with a lot of yellow and green.
• Size
InVision size grading is based on diameters of the piece of produce. Sizer uses
InVision’s dimension data in conjunction with the Sizer weight information to sort
produce into grades of a consistent physical size. InVision can measure many
different diameters or sizes.
• Shape
Shape grading sorts produce so that each grade is a consistent shape. For example
Grade A may be fruit that are as close to round as possible, Grade B may be fruit that
range from round to slightly oval, and Grade C may be fruit that are definitely oval.
• Volume
Volume is the amount of space a piece of produce takes up. InVision collects volume
data and passes it to Sizer. Sizer then uses the data, in conjunction with the Sizer
weight information, to perform density grading.
(Density is the weight linked to the unit volume for a piece of produce. For example,
if two pieces of produce weigh the same, but one is smaller in its volume, the smaller
volume piece has a higher density.)
• Blemish
Blemish is a way of grading produce based on small marks on their surface. These
marks or blemishes will generally be very small and the total area of all the blemishes
on a piece of produce will be negligible compared to the total produce area. While
the percentage of the blemish area may be very low, these marks can have a very
significant effect on the produce value (for example hail damage on apples).
Sometimes clever use of Color grading alone can detect these blemishes correctly,
but in most cases it requires a separate blemish grading solution. Blemish grading is
only available on InVision 7000 and 9000 series.
• Texture
Texture is a way of identifying the appearance of a piece of fruit, i.e. whether it is
smooth or rough. This is an additional software feature that is sold separately. It is
used for citrus (mainly oranges) to detect puff and crease, and to separate smooth
skinned oranges from “pebbly” oranges. Texture is also used for detecting botrytis
and scale on kiwifruit.
Additionally there are some Special Grading options that allow InVision to correct for
grading errors or ambiguities by isolating produce at a specific outlet or recycling them for
re-grading (such as Touching, Slipping, Oversized produce, etc).
Key Concepts
To enable grading in InVision, you will need grading criteria set up for every produce
Variety you sort. (This is done using the Variety or Offline variety screens.)
Each Variety has a Fruit Color Map and a Grade Grid. The Fruit Color Map teaches
InVision how to identify various characteristics of the produce. The Grade Grid specifies
how much of each characteristic a piece of produce must have to be assigned to a
particular grade.
There are additional Categories you can set up to sort on (e.g. Size, Shape, etc).
These key concepts are explained in more detail below.
Change
Variety
Settings
Create or Change
Grade Grid Save
Select
values Variety
Variety
Change
Fruit Color
Mapping
Variety settings
You create a Fruit Variety to tell InVision which grading options and features will be used
by this particular fruit Variety. You can start creating a Fruit Variety by selecting a pre-
established standard produce type (e.g. red apple, green apple) to obtain default variety
settings. If you start your setup using the "generic" variety, all settings may need to be
specified.
Section 2 – Creating and Testing a Variety, and the Tutorials in Appendix A explain
how to set up Varieties.
Grade Grid
InVision uses a Grade Grid to tell it how to sort the produce. A Grade Grid consists of:
• the Characteristics used to define how the produce will be graded (e.g. the color, the
size, the shape, etc.)
• the Grades required for the Variety (Grade A, Grade B, Grade C, Reject, etc). The
number of Grades should normally be the same as the Grades for this Variety in
Sizer.
• the Cut-off Points entered for each grade against a Characteristic, to specify what
is acceptable in that Grade for the Characteristic (e.g. Grade A must have at least
20% "Dark Red" color characteristic, and 50% "Other Red" color characteristic.)
Most of the information InVision processes is from the camera images of the produce.
InVision needs to know what your Variety "looks" like and what characteristics are
different between the various Grades for a Variety. Characteristics are grouped by
"Category" – Fruit Color; Fruit Shape, etc. (See “Set up Grade Grid Characteristics”
(Page 34) in Section 2 for more information.)
Color Maps are used to define the colors associated with a Fruit Color Characteristic.
Color Maps
Most Varieties have a diverse range of skin colors. Some colors may be considered
"good" while others may be considered "bad" (e.g. green on a green apple is "good"; but
green on a red apple may be "bad").
A Color Map allows you to group various shades of colors into a limited number of user
defined colors.
For example, when grading oranges, the different shades of orange and yellow might all
be grouped into a color Characteristic called "Orange", while various shades of green
might be grouped into a color called "Green". The fruit might then be graded on the
percentage of green color.
Color Maps are set up by clicking on one or more good examples of a color Characteristic
in the Fruit Image, and then asking InVision to "Learn" the color. Each click creates a
color "seed". See “The Click and Learn interface” following.
There are several "types" of Color Maps. The maps available to you depend upon the
model of InVision you are using. If a Color Map tab is greyed out, the mapping option is
not available e.g. InVision 5000 does not use the blemish grading tab options. See “Color
Maps tab options” (Page14) in this Section.
Clicks
The Color Map buttons and “click cursors” change to reflect the Characteristic or feature
you are identifying, for example:
+ +
+ +
For explicit instructions on how to color map, see “Create the Color Map” (Page 37) in
Section 2. Instructions for color mapping Size, Shape, Blemish and Texture are provided
in their separate Sections.
Learn
Clicks need to be processed by clicking the Learn button. You can Learn after every
click, or after several clicks. Sometimes just one click is enough to identify a feature and
obtain the desired result in the Processed Fruit Image. At other times, several clicks may
be required.
Seeds
Each click creates a “Seed”. The seed count is displayed at the bottom of the screen in
the Status Bar to help you keep track of the clicks you have added.
The five pairs of numbers represent the five Color Maps tabs. (In each set of brackets, the
first number represents Color, and the second number represents IR.) In the example
above, the Fruit Color Map tab has 14 color seeds and 3 IR seeds set; the Good Skin tab
has 1 color seed set, etc. (See “The Variety and Offline Status Bar” (Page 54) in
Section 2 for more information.)
Important:
You can remove the last seed “learned” by clicking the Undo button on the Color Maps
toolbar. Repeatedly clicking Undo will also remove previous seeds set on that particular
Color Maps tab, until there are no seeds set at all (and you can start again). You must
click Learn to refresh the Processed Fruit Image after using the Undo button.
3 Blobs tab
Blobs (blemishes or defects) are mapped on this tab so that InVision can differentiate
between blemishes and normal skin. See “Mapping on the 'Blobs' tab” (Page 168) in
Section 6.
5 Texture tab
This tab is only available if your InVision system is configured for texture grading. Texture
mapping can be useful for identifying puff and crease on oranges, and botrytis and scale
on kiwifruit. Images are texture mapped so that InVision can differentiate between "good
skin" and "bad texture". See “Section 7 - Texture Grading” (Page 192).
Setting up InVision
This flow chart describes how the Compac Technician will set up InVision for you to use.
Before shipping,
software and default
values are set up
Done by
Compac On arrival of InVision,
Technicians on-site default values
are set up
Done by
Compac Grade information is
Technicians entered and tested
and
Operators
Sorting commences
Using InVision
This flow chart describes how you use InVision on a daily basis.
Starting InVision
Note: For full Operator Start of Day procedures for both Sizer and InVision, see
Compac’s separate document "Sizer & InVision Operator Start of Day and
Troubleshooting Procedures".
InVision will usually start up automatically when the InVision computer is turned on.
Follow this procedure to start InVision manually.
Access levels are used to avoid accidental changes being made to data that can severely
impact your sorting.
You can change the access level at which InVision is running. Changing the access level
may enable or disable certain menu functions in InVision. For example, a user who has
received Compac training may have a higher access level than a standard user. Please
note that while passwords are provided here, levels are not established for the benefit of
Compac - they are for the protection of operators. Care must be taken if you are working
in the higher levels, and always remember to change the level back to a standard access
level.
Note: Packhouse managers should keep records of all the access level passwords for
their InVision users.
1. From the InVision menu, choose Change Access Level (or select CTRL-A on
the keyboard) to display the Access Control window.
2. In the Enter Password field, enter the password for the access level you require
(see "User Access Level Options" following) and then click OK.
To exit InVision
1. In the InVision menu, select Exit from InVision.
Note: If the current access level does not allow you to exit, then the access level
window will appear. You will be able to leave the program after entering the
correct password.
2. In the Shutdown window, choose an Exit or Shutdown option for either "All
computers" or for "This computer only".
InVision menu and toolbar options provide access to the screens that are used to set up,
monitor and manage your InVision grading.
There are features common to all InVision screens.
Area Description
Main Menu. Drop down menus provide access to the InVision functions. User
access levels determine the Menu items available.
See also "Main Menu options" (Page 21).
Main Toolbar. Provides shortcut buttons to the most commonly used InVision
screens.
See also "Main Toolbar options" (Page 23).
System Status Bar. Displays InVision processing information.
Use to:
• change your access level (see
"Changing Security Access Levels"
(Page 18) in this Section.
• view logs (see “Viewing Log Files of
InVision data” (Page 242) in Section 8.)
• print and export data from the current
screen (see “Printing InVision Data”
(Page 244) and “Exporting InVision
Data” (Page 244) in Section 8).
• exit InVision (see "Exiting and Shutting
Down InVision" (Page 19) in this
Section.
Opens the Variety screen, which lets you set up the grading for the
active Variety. See "About the Variety and Offline Screens" (Page
26) in Section 2.
Opens the Video screen, displaying live video images from the sorting
machine. See "Video Screen" (Page 70) in Section 3.
Opens the Alarms screen to show active alarms and to edit alarms
settings. This button flashes when an alarm has been activated. See
“Working with Alarms” (Page 233) in Section 8.
Opens the Offline variety screen, which lets you edit inactive
Varieties. See "About the Variety and Offline Screens" (Page 26) in
Section 2.
Opens the Images screen, which displays diagnostic data for captured
produce images. See “Images Screen” (Page 72) in Section 3.
Technician access level only. Opens the Alerts screen that displays
errors and warnings.
Overview
This Section describes the Variety and Offline screen features in detail and
provides a summary of steps for creating a simple Variety, Color Map and Grade
Grid. The Toolbar options and the Status Bar are explained at the end of this
Section.
Read this Section and complete the Tutorials in Appendix A to obtain an
understanding of the basic InVision functionality.
In this Section
Page
About the Variety and Offline Screens ............................................................. 26
Steps Required to Set Up a Variety in InVision ................................................ 30
Create the Variety ............................................................................................. 31
Set up Grade Grid Characteristics ................................................................... 34
Create the Color Map ....................................................................................... 37
Set up Grade Grid Grades and Values ............................................................ 43
Test and Fine Tune the Variety ........................................................................ 49
The Variety and Offline Screen Toolbar Options.............................................. 51
The Variety and Offline Status Bar ................................................................... 54
The Variety or Offline variety screens are used to create, test and modify Varieties.
The Variety screen displays whenever InVision is started. The Variety details displayed
on this screen are always for the Active Variety. This is the Fruit Variety that is controlling
the current InVision sorting.
The Offline option is selected to set up new Varieties or make changes to existing
Varieties (except for the Active Variety) without impacting the current sorting.
Both screens enable you to set up and change Fruit Variety information if your access
level allows it.
This topic explains:
The Variety and Offline screen features
When to use the Variety screen versus the Offline screen
The differences between Colors and Grades mode
Making a Variety Active
Area Description
Variety and Offline screen area. All information within this area is used to
create test and change Varieties.
Variety and Offline variety toolbar. Provides quick access to the most
commonly used Variety set up functions.
For more information see "The Variety and Offline Screen Toolbar Options"
(Page 51) in this Section.
Grade Grid area. Can only be edited if the Grades toolbar option is selected.
Displays the Variety’s:
• Categories and Characteristics
• Grades (e.g. A. Grade, B. Grade, etc.)
• Cut-off Points for selected Characteristics for each grade.
This is the information that determines the rules for each grade.
Color Maps area. Can be edited if the Colors toolbar option is selected.
Used to select colors for Characteristics and view the results of the current
mapping against snapped or captured images.
Contains:
• Color Maps tabs and Color/IR button
There are five Color Maps potentially available. These enable mapping of
produce images for Fruit Colors, Good Skin, Blobs, Blob Colors and
Texture. In the screen example above, Fruit Colors is selected.
If infrared cameras are in use, the Color/IR button works as a "toggle", to
show and work with infrared images.
Note that InVision 5000 systems only use the Fruit Color map, and may also
have the Color/IR option.
See “Color Maps tab options” (Page 14) in Section 1.
• Color Map Editor Toolbar. Provides all the tools required to select colors
from the Original Fruit Image for mapping to the Processed Fruit Image.
See also "Color Maps toolbar options" in this Section.
Fruit Capture Grid area.
Contains:
• Captured Fruit Toolbar. Used to work with the Captured Fruit List (e.g. to
start captures of images of single pieces of produce for testing purposes, to
load an image, to display its grading result in the Grade Grid, etc).
• Fruit Capture List. Displays a list of produce images captured for grading
set up and fine-tuning purposes. Each list item contains a series of images of
a single piece of produce rotating under the InVision camera(s). Grading
results for each piece of produce are displayed. When a new Capture is
started, the current list is overwritten.
Grading Status Bar. Shows the Variety name and color map information.
For more information see "The Variety and Offline Status Bar" (Page 54) in
this Section.
The two screen options - Variety and Offline - provide similar functionality, and display
similar screens. The Offline screen has a blue background to make it easier to tell the
difference at a glance.
Variety screen (White Cell Background) Offline screen (Blue Cell Background)
Variety screen
The Variety screen shows the "Active" (or online) Variety. If your sorter is running
produce, these are the settings that are controlling the vision grading.
Any changes in this screen will change the way the produce is currently graded when you
press the Apply Changes button.
Offline screen
The Offline variety screen displays the same information as the Variety screen, however
the Grade Grid is colored blue. You can load any Variety (apart from the one currently in
use in the Variety screen) into the offline editor in order to review and modify that variety.
Changes will be saved when the Save Changes button is pressed, and will affect the
grading only when this Variety becomes the current active variety (by loading it into the
online editor, i.e. the Variety screen).
Note:
While Variety IDs must be identical between InVision and Sizer for automated batch
change, the Variety names do not need to be exactly the same (although having them the
same is good practice).
This diagram shows the suggested steps to set up, test and fine-tune a Variety in
InVision.
The steps are repeated as necessary. Once a Variety has been created, Grade Grid and
Color Map set up and editing is performed, completing the steps in any order appropriate
to the user.
Set up
Grade Grid Add and name Grades. Capture images of
Grades and sample fruit. Set up the Cut-off Point values
against the grading Characteristics.
Values
You will need to set up a Fruit Variety for every variety of produce that needs vision
grading on your sorter.
Note that you can copy and modify a Variety if the new Variety has similar attributes to an
existing one.
This topic explains how:
To create a new Variety
To change a Variety's set up information
To delete a Variety or recover a deleted Variety
Note: The steps in these procedures are described in more detail in Tutorials 1 and 2 in
Appendix A.
Select either:
• Create new fruit variety (to create a new Variety and select all the
parameters), or
• Create new fruit variety based on existing one (to copy an existing Variety,
give it a new name, and change the parameters, if necessary).
(Note that Select an existing fruit variety will load an existing Variety; it will not
create a new one.)
5. Enter the Variety Name, and select the Variety options appropriate for your
produce type.
(See "Fruit Variety Information window options" (Page 59) in Section 3.)
6. Click Finish if you are sure you want to save the changes. Changes are
automatically applied to the Variety (i.e. you cannot discard these changes).
Make changes as required in the Fruit Variety Information window. (See Page 59 in
Section 3).
Note: When is clicked, changes are applied immediately (i.e. you cannot
discard these changes).
Delete a Variety
From the Variety menu, select Delete Fruit Variety to display the Select Fruit Variety
window. Select one or more varieties to be deleted, and click Finish.
A Characteristic defines the property of the produce you are grading (for example a
percentage of red color; or the elongation of a fruit). At a minimum a Variety will require
two Fruit Color characteristics to enable grading. Characteristics are grouped by
Category.
This topic explains:
About Categories and Characteristics
To add Categories
To add Characteristics
To rename a Characteristic
To delete a Category or Characteristic
Note: The steps in these procedures are described in more detail in Tutorials 1 and 2.
Characteristics
Characteristics can be set to grade on many produce properties, such as "good" colors or
"bad" colors, fruit shapes (elongation, flatness, symmetry, etc) and special characteristics
such as fruit that touch during imaging, or onions that have loose skin or thick elongated
stems.
In general, a typical Grade Grid will only require two to three Fruit Color Characteristics to
sort effectively.
Once set up, characteristics are used to define your grades. Values are set up in the
Grade Grid against a Characteristic to tell InVision what range or value of the
characteristic is acceptable in a Grade (e.g. a percentage of red color; an area of white
color, the degree of symmetry of the fruit). The measurement criteria (%, area, etc) is set
in the Mode column.
Mode options are explained in more detail in “About Modes” (Page 44) in “Set up Grade
Grid Grades and Values” in this Section.
Categories
Categories are only used to group Characteristics in a meaningful way. For more
information on all the Categories available, see "Select Category (and Characteristics)
window options" (Page 91) in Section 4.
To add Categories
1. Create or select the Variety in the appropriate screen (e.g. Variety or Offline).
Warning: Working in the Variety screen will affect your current sorting.
4. Select the Mode value for calculating the Grade Grid Cut-off Points (e.g. %, Area
etc).
See also “About Modes” (Page 44) in “Set up Grade Grid Grades and Values”
in this Section.
To add Characteristics
1. Create or select the Variety in the appropriate screen (e.g. Variety or Offline).
Warning: Working in the Variety screen will affect your current sorting.
•
2. • Click the appropriate "Add" button for the Characteristic (e.g. Add Fruit Color,
or Add Shape). Example:
4. Select the Mode value for calculating the Grade Grid Cut-off Points (e.g. %, Area
etc).
See also “About Modes” (Page 44) in “Set up Grade Grid Grades and Values”
in this Section.
To rename a Characteristic
Some Characteristics (e.g. Fruit Color) can be renamed. Left-click on the Characteristic
(or use the keyboard arrows to move to the Characteristics) and type a new name.
Every Variety needs a Fruit Color Map set up to define the color characteristics being
graded on.
This topic explains:
Color Mapping terminology
How to select your produce samples
Some tips for selecting fruit colors
About the Fruit Color Characteristics
To create a basic Color Map.
Term Explanation
Color Maps A Color Map groups different shades of colors into small sets of colors
that are defined by the user, such as conveyor color (every thing that is
not produce), “good red”, “too green” and so on.
Conveyor The conveyor color in a Color Map is used to identify everything in the
Color image that is not produce.
Fruit Color A Fruit Color Characteristic is the collection of shades that the user
Characteristics wants to be grouped together and graded on. For instance “dark
green”. The shades don’t need to be of the same color in any sense.
For example, if brown and red colors are equally bad for green apples,
you may have a “brown or red” color. (See “About the Fruit Color
Characteristics” (Page 39) in this Section.
Color Seeds For each Fruit Color Characteristic, you must identify at least one color
"seed". Color seeds are examples given to the vision software to
identify the different colors. The seeds are created by clicking on points
in the picture to tell InVision which color they belong to. The result of
what InVision "Learns" from these seeds is shown in the Processed
Fruit Image.
When you record a color seed, it is taken as a sample of the color at
the exact spot (i.e. pixel) where you clicked (e.g. Red).
However, it is not until Learn is clicked, that the one or more color
seeds recorded are processed by InVision. InVision evaluates how the
new color samples (e.g. for Red) relate to any other color
Characteristics (e.g. Green) and updates the Processed Fruit Image to
show the new separation of colors. (See also “The Click and Learn
Interface” (Page 13) in Section 1.
Term Explanation
Snapped InVision takes images of fruit in two ways.
Images
and
• Snapped Images
Captured One image of one or more fruit taken when an InVision user
Images presses the "Snap" button in the Colors toolbar. This image is
displayed in the Color Maps area until another snapped image
supersedes it.
• Captured Images
The sequence of images of a single piece of fruit taken as it travels
down the sorter and under the cameras. Captured image data is
shown in the Fruit Capture Grid at the bottom of the Variety or
Offline screen. To view a piece of captured fruit, click on it and it
displays in the Color Maps area.
There are two views of the images - “Normal” and Reduced” (see
Page 15).
Marking boundaries
To help identify boundaries between different colored regions on a piece of produce, you
can mark the boundaries with a pen. Since the colors might appear different on screen,
this will help achieve the color definitions you want in your images (see picture below).
• Click Learn after selecting a color to see the result of the selection. (With experience,
you may wish to do multiple clicks before "learning".)
• Try to click obvious examples of colors, and stay away from borderline colors. The
more you can do this, the better defined the borders between colors will be.
• Try to find color examples to click on that are in the center of the images. (InVision
makes most of its color measurements in the center of the produce images where the
lighting is the most consistent. This area is called the "band".)
• Notice the RGB values displayed on the status bar at the bottom right of the screen.
Alternatively choose "Select color with details" from the Info button on the Color
Maps toolbar to show RGB values on your Fruit Color cursor.
These values change as you move from pixel to pixel in the image, and can help you
decide where to click to select color seeds.
3. Place a sample of the produce under the cameras on the stationary sorter and
then Snap the image.
Note: You can adjust the image brightness level by selecting Edit Variety and
choosing a different Brightness option before re-snapping the image.
4. If necessary, add more Fruit Color Characteristics and name the colors.
5. For the Conveyor color, and for each Fruit Color Characteristic, use the cursors to
click on at least one example of the color and click Learn. (Ensure the point of
the “paint dropper” cursor is on the pixel you are selecting.)
6. Review the results of the color mapping in the Processed Fruit Image in the bottom
half of the Color Maps area.
Add more Fruit and Conveyor color seeds until you are satisfied with the mapping:
Refine Fruit
color
Review mapping
Grading LEARN
results colors
Refine
Conveyor
mapping
7. Click the Edge button to check that the images show accurate Edge definitions.
Edit your Conveyor and Fruit Colors until the Edges are clearly defined.
Important: You must define Edges accurately when doing any dimension or
shape grading.
8. If necessary, snap more images of sample produce and repeat Steps 4 through 8
until the Color Map and Fruit Color Characteristics provide a good definition of the
colors you are wanting to grade on.
The Grade Grid relates a Variety’s Characteristics (e.g. Fruit Colors) to its Grades, using
the grade Cut-off Points.
When produce is run over the sorter, a grade is determined for each piece of produce,
and the information is sent by InVision to the Sizer software. This links the vision grading
with weight grading and enables Sizer to grade and deliver the produce to the correct
outlet (for packing, discarding, etc).
You will need to use the Grades mode (not the Colors mode) to edit the Grade Grid Cut-
off Points.
This topic explains:
The number of Grades required
About Grades and Characteristics
About Modes
About Cut-off Points
About Grade title colors
To set up a Grade Grid
To add Grades to a Grade Grid
Most grading values are set as numeric ranges (cut-off points), although some "Special"
grades use on/off checkboxes.
About Modes
The Mode set against a Characteristic tells InVision how to compute the Cut-off Point
values set for the Characteristic across the Grade Grid.
The Modes available for Fruit Color Characteristics are described here. (Other modes
are also available for other characteristic types (e.g. Defect Colors have additional
Defect Modes.)
Mode Description
% This is the most commonly used mode for color grading. The percentage of
skin area covered by each color is calculated. Grading is done by comparing
the percentages of each color with those required for each grade.
Area This mode will show the area (in mm2) of the produce covered by a particular
color. Fruit is graded on the area of allowable color in each grade. This mode
is useful for for identifying certain very distinct bad colors (e.g. tears or cuts
that expose white-colored flesh, or bird lime on produce)
Per Used for grading where very small amounts of color are significant. This
10k mode is the same as the % calculation mode, except that the numbers are
100 times larger.This enables very small percentage values to be entered
(e.g. a value of 55 in this mode is identical to a value of 0.55% in % mode.
Block Used to distinguish between colors that are located in one place on a fruit
count (e.g. to grade out concentrations of sunburn color, where the same color
being present in small quantities all over the skin area may be acceptable).
Ignore The function of the Ignore mode depends on the type of characteristic you
are using it with.
For Fruit Color characteristics:
• The Ignore mode is used to ignore labels on fruit. Any image with this color
in the band will be ignored for color, blemish and texture grading. The
image is still used for shape grading. See '”Grading using 'Ignore' Fruit
Color Mode (for fruit with labels)" (Page 128) in Section 4.
For blemish grading (against Defect Color characteristics):
• Ignore is used to indicate that a mark is not a defect (InVision 7000 and
9000 systems only). See “Section 6 – Blemish (or Blob) Grading” (Page
162).
In this example, a fruit with up to 5% "Green" is Export grade. A fruit with over 30%
"Green" is Juice grade.
When grade cut-off point values are set and produce is being run, InVision evaluates the
grades from left to right across the Grade Grid. Therefore Grade A is always checked
first to see if the fruit data is correct for that grade. If it is not, the next grade to the right is
checked (e.g. Grade B), and so on until a match is found. InVision always assigns a fruit
or vegetable to the left-most grade that matches the measurements made for it.
You will notice that the last Grade (i.e. D. Juice) does not have values specified. Produce
will be assigned to that Grade by default if no grading values match for an earlier grade.
Note: With two exceptions, it is very important that the last grade has no values. This
enables produce that does not match an earlier grade will still have an appropriate grade
assigned.
The two exceptions to this rule are:
• If you are using the “Special” category grading characteristics (Doubles, etc) the last
grade may be the special grade, and the empty grade (with no values defined) is the
one before the specials grade.
• In “Tomato mode” (e.g. using standard fruit type “Tomatoes” and grading only on
function) all the grade cut-off values are specified, with the minimum value of each
grade being set to the maximum value of the grade before it.
When you first set up your Grade Grid, your cut-off point values are estimations. You will
need to test your Grade Grid on sample produce, and adjust the ranges as part of testing.
You can also adjust them while your sorting machine is sorting produce, if you find that
the grading is not providing the best results for you.
For more detailed information see "Guidelines for Grading" (Page 96) in Section 4.
The Blue/Green (Aqua) Grade title headings shown in the Grade Grid example above
may also be colored:
• Grey (to indicate a disabled grade – which means that no fruit is allowed to receive
Grade A)
• Red (to indicate there is no default grade – which means that some produce might
not match any grade, and InVision will have to find the “best match)
• Yellow (which means there are "unused" grades in the Grade Grid, i.e. the grade
values currently set will not allow produce to be assigned to the grades showing in
yellow because an earlier grade is empty)
3. In the Grades Grid area, click Add Grade and specify the number of grades to
add, and their position on the Grade Grid.
5. If necessary, select the Mode for grading (%, Area, etc) for each Characteristic.
(Mode defaults appropriately for the Characteristic type selected, but can be
changed (e.g. Defect mapping usually requires Area mode.)
See “About Modes” (Page 44) in “Set up Grade Grid Grades and Values” in this
Section.
6. Set your Grade Grid Cut-off Points or values for the Characteristics you will grade
on, e.g. what percentage of "Green" is allowed in each of the Grades for a Red
Apple Variety?
See "Guidelines for Grading" (Page 96) in Section 4.
8. Adjust the Cut-off Points according to the grading values displayed against each
fruit Capture in the Fruit Capture Grid, then click Regrade Fruit and review the
grading results for the Captured images.
Repeat this step until your sample fruit is being assigned to the appropriate Grade.
2. In the Add Grade window, select the number of grades to add, specify whether the
grade(s) are to be inserted either Before or After a nominated Grade, and then
select the Grade for the insertion point (e.g. Add 3 Grades After Grade A).
3. Click OK.
Once you have created a Color Map, set up Grades and Cut-off Points for a Variety, and
performed some initial testing, you need to test the Variety thoroughly before it is used for
processing.
Testing may result in further Color Map or Grade Grid adjustments being required.
Seasonal changes to fruit you are sorting may also require you to adjust your Variety
settings.
1. Obtain a further selection of fruit for testing (or capture fruit during normal sorting).
For more information about capturing, see "Using Captured Images to Refine
Grading" (Page 109) in Section 4.
Run a selection of fruit on the conveyor. Make sure the pieces of fruit are at least
1-2 meters apart on the conveyor if you want to examine results for specific fruit.
Note: You can also use the Images screen to view edges on all the captured fruit.
You can then right-click on any image and select "Show this fruit in Variety
window" to edit its Color Map.
4. You can also use the View Skin, Skins view to check your color mapping.
Colors inside the skin must be accurately mapped in the Processed Fruit Image
(in the bottom half of the screen). If not, correct your color mapping. (Note that
color mapping outside of the skin can sometimes be slightly incorrect without the
grading results being affected.)
5. Check the Grade result and the Major and Minor Diameter measurements in the
Captured Fruit List.
• If the fruit images are graded correctly for color, check that the measurements
displayed in each row of data make sense for the fruit images captured. Check
the overall grade assigned to the fruit.
Make adjustments to the grading criteria (Characteristics, Cut-off Points, etc) as
necessary.
Check that video images are being received, and that the fruit centers
coincide with the centers of all the fruit or their carriers. If video images are not
being received, or are not correctly aligned, check the fruit limits in the Fruit
Settings screen, or contact your local Compac Technician.
Toolbars and menu options give access to all the InVision functions. Right-click menus
and buttons, (e.g. Add Category, Add Fruit Color in Categories and Characteristics) also
provide shortcuts to many setup functions.
This topic covers:
Variety and Offline screen toolbar options
Color Maps toolbar options
When you select either Variety or Offline variety from the Main toolbar, the following
toolbar options display:
Loads the selected Variety onto the screen. In the online Variety
screen, it also makes the new variety "Active" so that sorting is
performed using that Variety’s grading parameters.
(If Sizer software is determining the Active Variety, this selection may
be overridden.)
Creates a new Variety, including a new Color Map and Grade Grid. In
the online Variety screen, also makes the variety "Active" so that
sorting is performed using that Variety’s grading parameters.
Allows you to edit the set up values for the currently selected Variety.
In the Variety screen, this is the currently Active Variety.
Button Description
In the Offline screen, saves changes to the current
Variety.
In the online Variety screen, also applies the
changes to the active Variety to make the changes
Offline screen Variety screen effective immediately.
Discards all changes that have been made (but not Applied or Saved)
and reverts to the last saved settings.
Swaps the Offline Variety and the Online Variety. A pop-up window
asks you to confirm the swap and warns that any changes made but
not saved will be lost.
Button Description
Every camera takes a picture of whatever is placed beneath it. If
there are many cameras, a dialog box pops up asking you to select
the lanes to use. The combined image then displays in the Color
Maps area.
Enables fruit color selection for a Fruit Color Characteristic.
Click here and the Fruit dropper cursor appears. The cursor displays
the name of the currently selected Characteristic. Use the tip of the
dropper to click on precise points in an image to select new color
seeds.
Enables conveyor color identification on the Color Map.
Click here and the Conveyor dropper cursor appears. Use the tip of
the dropper to click on points in the images that are not fruit.
Interprets the color seeds selected and builds the Processed Color
Map.
Changes to zoom mode. A left mouse click in the image window will
zoom in on the clicked point. A right mouse click will zoom out. The
image cursor changes to indicate this mode. From the drop-down
menu choose Zoom to Fit to fit the entire image in the window; or
Zoom 1:1 to return to non-zoom.
With each click on this button, a color seed is removed. You can
Undo until there are no more colors identified for the Color Map.
After doing as many undo operations as you want, you will need to
click the Learn button to rebuild the color map, and see the effects
of your change(s).
Button Description
Click to apply or remove edges to the images to help you check the
color mapping.
Select the Edge option you want from the drop-down menu:
Fruit edge - Displays the edge of the fruit, that is, the boundary
between regions of conveyor color and all other fruit colors.
Current edge - Displays the edges of all regions mapped to the
color that is currently selected.
All edges - Displays the boundaries between all distinct color
regions.
Click to apply or remove pink highlighting on the image that shows
only the pixels that relate to your currently selected color. Use
Highlighting to see if your color mapping is accurate.
This status bar displays the currently selected Variety, and provides information to assist
in your Color Mapping.
or or
Field Description
Shows the selected Variety and its Sizer Variety
ID(s). In the Variety screen, this is the Active
variety.
Shows five sets of values (separated by a comma)
that indicate the number of color seeds set on each
of the 5 Color Map tabs.
For example the first set (14+3) relate to the Fruit
Colors tab; the second set (1+0) relate to the Good
Skin tab; etc.
A color seed is created by clicking on an image in
the Color Map. A color seed is associated with a
Characteristic.
When there is a pair of numbers (e.g. 14+3) the
first number (14) represents color and the second
number (3) represents IR.
If your system has synchronized color and IR
cameras then some tab positions will show one
number only.
Shows an X and Y axis value to indicate where on
the image, in the Color Map, the cursor is currently
located.
Shows the exact "RGB" (Red, Green, Blue) values
or of the pixel at the cursor’s current location in the
Color Map.
or “ir” shows the value for the specified IR channel if
IR view is selected (e.g. ir1).
(Note: On a synchronized system IR displays with
the RGB values, i.e. there will be 4 values:
RGBIR.)
"t" values display if you are in the Blobs tab.
Shows the Zoom value currently in use on the
Color Map.
Overview
This Section describes the functionality of the most commonly used InVision screens and
windows. Sub-windows that relate to specific grading functions are covered in their
related Sections.
In this Section
Page
Status Screen ................................................................................................... 56
Variety and Offline Screens .............................................................................. 57
Select Fruit Variety window options............................................................. 57
Fruit Variety Information window options..................................................... 59
Blemish Grading Parameters tab options .................................................... 64
Texture Grading Parameters tab options .................................................... 68
Video Screen .................................................................................................... 70
Alarms Screen .................................................................................................. 71
Images Screen ................................................................................................. 72
Info Screen ....................................................................................................... 72
Iris Setting Window ........................................................................................... 75
Fruit Limits Screen ............................................................................................ 82
Vision Dialog Pop-ups ...................................................................................... 83
Status Screen
Click the Status button on the toolbar, or select Status Window from the View menu, to
view the Status screen processing information and reset the status data.
For a full description of how to use this screen to monitor and troubleshoot your InVision
grading, see “Viewing the System Status Screen” (Page 207) in Section 8.
Screen
2 4
Areas
Area Description
Reset button
Clears current values from the Status screen. New values display when more produce
is run.
For a full explanation of the Variety and Offline variety screen areas see “About the
Variety and Offline Screens” (Page 26) in Section 2.
For steps to create a new variety, see “Create the Variety” (Page 30) in Section 2.
The following Variety and Offline screen options are described here:
Select Fruit variety window options
Fruit Variety Information window options
Blemish Grading Parameters tab options
Texture Grading Parameters tab options
The Select Fruit Variety window displays all saved InVision Varieties. By default, they
are listed in the order of their last date of use. To sort the Varieties by any other criteria
(e.g. date, name) click on a column heading. Click again on the same column to invert the
order (sort backwards).
Note that “deleted” Varieties can also be viewed in this screen if your access level allows
it.
Window
Warning:
Changes made in this window for the Active variety in the Variety screen will be applied
to your sorting immediately. (Changes made to a variety in the Offline screen will not
affect your current sorting.)
Note: If your system does not have separate Color and IR cameras (e.g. if you have
Color only, IR only, or are using the Color/IR pixel synchronized system) then fields on
this screen that are not required will not display. (For example, under Uniformity
calibration, there may be only one drop-down selection box.)
Also, some options in this window may not appear on your screen if the features are not
compatible with your machine configuration or grading set up (e.g. texture parameters will
only display if your machine supports texture grading).
Window
Fields
Field Description
Name The name of the Variety. It is “best practice” to give the Variety the same
name in InVision as it has in Sizer.
Sizer Fruit This is the Identification number assigned to the Variety in the Sizer
Variety Ids software. Specifying the Sizer Id enables automatic activation of a Variety
after a Sizer Batch Change. If you do not want this kind of integration, do
not provide an Id number. You can assign more than one Id number to a
Variety. This is useful when there are two or more Sizer Varieties that use
the same InVision grading criteria. Use the Add Id and Remove Id buttons
as required to associate the Identification numbers you want.
Configure Select the most appropriate Fruit Type from the drop-down list. This will
settings using pre-set all other options to appropriate values for grading this type of
standard fruit produce.
type
Color Grading Options
Fruit These are the camera setting options you can select for the varieties you
Brightness are sorting. The Fruit Brightness options are usually pre-defined by the
Technicians or by Advanced Users.
Note that changes to a Variety's Fruit Brightness settings can only be tested
by making the Variety "Active" in the Variety window prior to running
captures and reviewing the results.
Use top view You may check this box if you are grading elongated fruit (such as red
only for color delicious apples) and you want to exclude the stem / calyx area (on the side
views) from the color count.
Field Description
Uniformity Calibration
Color or This selects the type of uniformity correction to apply for this Fruit Variety.
Infrared Options are:
• Static – The calibration is done with a calibration bar.
• Dynamic – This adjusts the calibration to the actual produce running
on the machine and keeps adjusting it as the produce changes.
Dynamic options are 1D or 2D:
• 1D (Dynamic) calibrates along the conveyor (horizontally), while
• 2D (Dynamic) also compensates for changes across the conveyor
caused by the produce shape.
Note: Dynamic correction is more accurate, but it may go wrong if the fruit
/ conveyor mapping is not accurate (e.g. because of a dirty conveyor). 2D
may be needed for soft fruit detection.
Dimension Grading
(see also Section 5 – Dimension (Size and Shape) Grading)
Major diameter These two options select which InVision diameter
and measurements will be sent to the Sizer software for
Minor diameter Sizer grading.
The drop-down list is the same for both Major or
Minor diameters and any selection can be made for
either of the diameters.
(While not often required, the diameter
measurements can also be used to grade produce
by size. This is done by setting up a Fruit Size
Category in the Grade Grid and specifying diameter
cut-off point values for the Grades.)
See also “Diameter Measurement Options” (Page
143) in “Grading By Size (Diameter and Volume)”
in Section 5.
Diameter Selects the type of diameter filtering used to achieve the most accurate
filtering results. Filtering makes the edge of the produce (as seen by InVision )
smoother. With no filtering, edges can be seen as “jagged” due to pixel
size or small dirt particles on the conveyor.
See also “Diameter Filtering options” (Page 159) in “Fruit Variety
Options that affect Size and Shape Grading” in Section 5.
Double Selects the double detection algorithm to use for the produce type.
detection Options are:
• Round (used for most fruit, e.g. apples, oranges),
• Cherry (used for cherries, and perhaps for plums)
• Asymmetric (recommended for potatoes, onions and pears).
See also ‘Special’ Grades to Resolve Imaging and Positioning
Problems” (Page 152) in Section 5.
Field Description
Treat split InVision will always try and fix images where two pieces of fruit are
touching as overlapping.
good When this option is checked, if InVision successfully splits touching fruit
images, it no longer counts them when calculating the degree of touching
for the fruit.
This option should generally not be selected.
See also “When to use ‘Split Touching Fruits as Good’” (Page 157) in
Section 5.
Fruit has When checked, this tells InVision the produce variety is one that has an
elongated stem obvious elongated stem that can be seen in the produce outline (e.g.
lemons, onions). InVision can calculate certain dimension and shape
measurements differently for these types of produce.
Move band Useful for gold kiwifruit only. When checked, this eliminates shadows
away from calyx close to the fruit calyx that might be identified incorrectly as defects.
Use shape Slippage is fruit not rotating, but slipping on the rollers. Slippage can be
changes to detected by the shape of the fruit not changing, or by marks on the fruit not
measure moving.
slippage • When checked, shape will be used to detect slippage.
Check the box if the fruit are not round.
• When unchecked, marks will be used to detect slippage.
Leave the box unchecked if the fruit are round.
If there are no blemish colors in the Variety, marks will not be detected and
the shape will be used for slippage regardless of what is selected here.
Brightness Checking this box improves Edge detection in Color Maps for produce
compensation varieties with a large variation in the brightness of color.
However as this may reduce the accuracy of sizing when there are
significant color changes within individual fruit, select this option only if
necessary.
Dimensions by: Check this box to select if dimension grading is done by color or by
Color or Infrared infrared imaging.
Diameter This enables you to set a percentage value for diameter adjustment. Any
correction % percentage value entered (limited to plus or minus 25%) will add or
(+/- 25%) subtract from the diameter measurement calculations for this Variety’s
produce. The default is 0, for no special adjustment.
This feature should be used only for a small correction over a calibrated
machine. (For example for a dark fruit variety where the diameters
measured by InVision are consistently smaller than the real diameters, you
might set a 5% diameter adjustment to compensate for the darkness.)
Grade Optimizer Options
(see also “Grading by Quality and Grade Optimization” (Page 130) in Section 4)
Use Grade Check this box to apply automatic grade optimization. Use the automatic
Optimizer for grade optimizer to maintain a specified distribution of fruit across a grade
grades: range.
x to y Specify the grade range. For example, maintain a 50:30:20 split in
number of fruit between grades B, C and D, with the 50% best quality fruit
eligible for these grades going to grade B, and the worst 20% going to
grade D.
Multiply Quality This check box provides compatibility for older versions of InVision.
value by If the box is checked, the Quality is the SUM of the score for each value
calculated against a Characteristic used for Grade Optimization (e.g. % of
red, area of dark defect, etc). Unticked is the default.
If the box is unchecked, the Quality is the AVERAGE of the calculated
values, multiplied by the number entered.
Window
Tabs
The Color and Infrared (IR) tabs provide the same fields for completion, except for the
Good Skin options.
Only tabs that are relevant to your InVision system will display.
If you have a non-pixel matched system that includes Infrared cameras, you will see
independent Color and IR tabs. In this case, you need to set the Blemish Grading
Parameters separately for the color and infrared images.
Fields
Field Description
Stem Detection
Fruit has stem Check this box to tell InVision to find the 2 marks that are the stem and
and calyx calyx, and not consider them when counting blemishes. Used for most
produce. Not used for potatoes and some kiwifruit.
The fields following become available for completion.
Ignore Blobs Only used rarely and primarily used to ignore very long stems on apples,
Close to Stem which may be detected as defects.
Check this box if blobs within a specified distance (in pixels) from the
stem should be ignored, and enter the pixel value.
(You can view the areas identified as “close to stem”, by viewing the
image in the Images screen. Click the Blobs button and select Display
All Blobs from the right-click mouse menu. The ignored area is shown
as a rectangle around the stem and calyx.)
Note that if ‘Stems on Pointy side’ is also selected in the Blemish
Grading Parameters screen, and stem / calyx are detected on the side
view, then all the blobs in that side view are ‘close to stem’. This may be
used for grading elongated fruit such as lemons and kiwifruit.
Concave stem Check this box if stem and calyx are indented. Used for apples.
(apple) The value entered (in the box beside it) indicates how much more
tolerant blob tracking needs to be around the stem / calyx area because
of the cavity.
If the number is too low the stem may be counted twice (once as stem,
and once as defect); if it is too high, marks close to the stem may be
discounted.
Typical range: 5 - 20
Max elongation Indicates that a blob (mark) that is more elongated then this value
for Stem and cannot be stem or calyx. The elongation is the ratio of the blobs to its
Calyx length – a circle has an elongation of 1.
This value should typically be high (around 1000), so that any shaped
blob can be identified as a stem.
Used mainly for pomegranates to avoid detecting cracks as stem.
Stem Size (Pixels) Enter the minimum and maximum stem size of the stem area in pixels.
This value should typically be high (as large as the largest possible
stem), to allow any sized blob to be identified as a stem.
(For Apples and Oranges, set the Minimum value to 50 and the
Maximum value to 3000.)
Calyx size (Pixels) Enter the minimum and maximum stem size of the calyx area in pixels.
This value should typically be high (as large as the largest possible
calyx), to allow any sized blob to be identified as a calyx.
Stems on flat side Check this box if the stem is located on the flat side of the produce (used
(mandarin) for mandarins).
When there is an ambiguity in which pair of blobs are the stem and
calyx, this tells InVision to prefer the blob on the flat side of the produce
as the stem.
Stems on pointy Check this box if the stem is always located on the "sharp" or angled
side (lemon) side of the produce (lemons, kiwifruit, some apples).
If Fruit has stem and calyx is not ticked and this option is, then it tells
InVision to avoid finding blobs on side views. This allows a 9000
machine to grade as a 7000 machine (for instance to achieve more
accurate kiwifruit grading on a 9000 apple and kiwifruit sorter).
Field Description
Expect Misshaped Check this box only if you are sorting produce that can have a very bad
Fruit (lowers shape (e.g. some apples) and you do not want to have the stem
overall accuracy) detected as a defect, and therefore the misshapen produce lowered in
grade.
This option is used infrequently and might lower the overall accuracy of
your grading.
Fruit with crease Stone fruit has a crease line going from the stem to the other end of the
(stone fruit) fruit. The line may be detected as a blemish because of its concavity and
this may cause good fruit to be downgraded.
When grading fruit with such a line, check this box to tell InVision that a
line is expected on the fruit and should not be counted as defect.
You can view the detected crease line in the Images screen. With the
Blobs button selected, turn on Toggle Stone fruit Crease from the right-
click mouse menu. When you click on a Crease blob line, the information
window displays the crease details.
Please contact your Compac technician or Compac Technical Support
before enabling this feature.
Grade Blob Colors by…
Area, Count, Both Select one of the following grading criteria:
Area – to set your grade map to grade Defect Colors by the total area of
each color.
Count – to set your grade map to grade Defect Colors by the total
number of blobs of each color.
Both – to grade by both total area and total number of blobs.
It is highly recommended you use Area, as Count may be less robust.
Advanced Parameters
Similarity This is the main value you need to adjust in the Blemish Grading
Threshold (%) Parameters screen.
This value controls blob tracking.
If you are seeing different blobs being identified as the same blob, this
value needs to be raised.
If you are seeing the same blob identified as two separate blobs, this
value needs to be lowered.
Recommended values are: Oranges - 95%, Mandarin - 90%, Apples -
85%.
Note: This value can be adjusted from the Blemish Strictness window.
See “Adjusting Blemish Grading Strictness During Grading” (Page
190) in Section 6.
Max distance This value determines the maximum distance, measured in pixels,
blobs merge between blobs in the same image for InVision to treat them as a single
(Pixels) blob.
If several distinct blobs are being merged together into a single blob, you
should lower this value.
If a single blob is being shown as several smaller blobs, you should raise
this value.
Before making any changes to this value, ensure the Blob / No Blob
mapping on the ‘Blobs’ tab is correct.
Typical range: 5 – 15
Field Description
Color to IR This option is only available for ‘non-pixel matched’ systems. It
matching angle measures the maximum angle between the color and IR view of a blob
(Deg) to enable them to be classified as the same blob. It is currently used
only for Stem and Calyx.
The default value of 20o is usually correct. Please contact your Compac
technician or Compac Technical Support if you find you need to change
this value.
Min blob size If a blob has less then this number of pixels, it is assumed to be just
(Pixels) noise in the image, and it is ignored.
Fruit May Be Check this box to indicate that the produce may not rotate exactly
Slipping according to the rollers (because it is small / flat / wet) and therefore blob
tracking needs to be more tolerant.
Note that turning this option on may cause InVision to miss obvious
marks on produce. Only select this option if slipping produce is causing
significant grading problems.
Ignore Small Check this box to indicate that if a mark is very small (up to 3 times the
Isolated Blobs minimum area) and was only detected in one image then it is probably
just noise and should be ignored.
Use this option only if you are trying to detect very small and faint
blemishes.
Good Skin For Good Skin Color, options are:
• Red/Green - used red apples, potatoes and pomegranates.
• Green/Yellow - used for green apples, oranges, mandarins, lemons,
and kiwifruit.
For Good Skin Infrared, options are:
• Coarse - used for larger marks, as it is less sensitive to image noise
and bright spots (light reflections) on the produce. It is also less likely
to break a larger mark (i.e. stem on apple) into several smaller
marks. This is the recommendation for apples and most other fruit.
• Fine – used for smaller faded marks, as it is more sensitive and will
detect very slight brightness changes. This is the recommendation
for kiwifruit.
Classify blobs by If this option is selected, Defect Colors will be mapped by their T values,
color contrast instead of by their color (RGB values).
If you change this option for your variety, you will need to clear and re-
map all your Defect Colors.
This option is not often used. Please contact your Compac technician or
Compac Technical Support for advice if you would like to use it.
Use top view only Use this option if you do not want to grade on blobs detected on the side
for blemish views of fruit (InVision 9000 system only). This can be useful for kiwifruit
and lemons. While InVision will still find blobs on the side views, it will
ignore them.
Window
Important:
Most of the parameters in this window are designed for new feature experimentation. You
should not need to change these parameters.
Instead, simply select the correct default version for your citrus puff and crease (Default
Citrus Presets) or kiwifruit (Kiwifruit Botrytis).
See Section 7 – Texture Grading (Page 192) for full texture grading procedures for
these two varieties.
Fields
Field Description
Modify Existing Texture Grading Parameters
Load Default From this drop-down list, select the predefined parameters (e.g. Default
Version Citrus Presets or Kiwifruit Botrytis) or choose to define your own Custom
Settings.
Grading If using Custom Settings, you may select up to three Grading Attribute
Attributes parameters.
Texture Image Specifies whether you are grading texture using Color or IR. (Do not
Type select Both because it will require very high processing.)
Advanced Parameters
Note: Fields here are defaulted to their correct values if a preset Default Version has been
selected.
Using Texture If selected (ticked), texture will classify each picture of the fruit to the
Rules for Texture appropriate texture class (crease, good, rough, etc).
Processing If not selected (unticked), each pixel in the image is classified to the
appropriate texture class (as opposed to each entire picture).
Tick this option for oranges, untick this option for kiwifruit.
Field Description
Exclude Values Texture pixels near blobs on the
Near Blobs produce should not be counted. These options are only valid if you
are not using Texture Rules.
Only Exclude Only ‘crease’ pixels near blobs
Crease Values should be ignored (count other The parameters are generally used
Near Blobs pixels near blobs). for development purposes and you
would not normally be selecting
Count Texture Only Only count pixels that belong to these options.
on First Fruit Color the first color in your color map.
Use Texture Always select this option for all texture grading.
Preprocessor Check this box to use the preprocessor to process the image before
Engine texture calculation.
Button
Save As Create more default settings. This option is for use by advanced
Technicians only.
Video Screen
Click the Video button on the toolbar, or select Running Live Video from the View
menu, to view this screen.
When the sorter is running, the Video screen shows images of all the views from all the
cameras on the lanes controlled by this computer. On multi computer machines, go to the
appropriate computer to watch its cameras.
When the sorter is not running, the Video screen is blank.
For a description of how to use this screen go to “Viewing Live Video” (Page 228) in
Section 8.
Alarms Screen
InVision constantly monitors for pre-set error conditions and can alert you when errors
occur.
By default, the Alarm screen displays only the current error conditions for Alarms that are
turned On. Select Show All to display the full list of all possible error conditions.
For more detailed information, see "Working with Alarms" (Page 233) in Section 8.
Screen
Images Screen
For a full description of how to use this screen to monitor and troubleshoot your InVision
grading, see “Viewing Captured Produce in the Images Screen” (Page 209) in Section
8.
Within that Section, for an explanation of the:
• viewing Modes, see “Images or Skins Viewing Mode” (Page 214) or “Normal (Full
Color) or Reduced Color Mode” (Page 215).
• different Overlay colors used on the various views of the images, see
“Size/Shape/Blemish Viewing Mode (and Color Overlays)” (Page 216).
Info Screen
The Information (Info) screen lets you review and analyze data for produce that has
been graded by InVision.
Each row of data in the grid is for a piece of produce or a carrier, with the exception of the
first few rows. These top rows display the averages and standard deviations of the
column data, plus certain other values you may choose to display.
Tab options
Data will be displayed according to the tab option selected at the bottom of the screen:
• Lanes – Shows all data from a lane, even for empty carriers.
See “Viewing Information for Graded Produce (Info Screen)” (Page 230) in
Section 8.
• Fruit lanes – Shows data only from produce detected on the lane.
• Pre-link lanes - Shows data as it was before any lane linking was applied to adjust
the values.
• Captured Fruit – Shows data for captured fruit.
• Histogram – Shows data used internally for creating histograms. Histogram data is
best viewed against Characteristics in the Variety or Offline variety screens.
See “Using the Histogram data to fine-tune cut-off point values” (Page 100) in
“Guidelines for Grading” in Section 4.
Screen
Toolbar options
Option Description
Save Saves the current data columns as a named diagnostic set that can
be selected from the Diag menu.
Diag Selects a set of data columns to display.
Group Selects a predefined group of data columns (i.e. all colors) to display.
Hide All Hides all columns from view.
Clear Clears all item values from the table.
Hide “0” Hides or displays all items with a value of zero.
Pause Stops and starts the display and runs an auto-refresh.
The remaining options in the right-click menu allow you to add columns of data into the
Information window (e.g. Grade Map, Vision input data, etc.)
The Iris Setting window is accessed from the Set Iris option in the Calibration menu.
This screen has multiple purposes, but is predominantly used by Compac Technicians.
•
It shows live images from cameras (one camera, or all cameras) which are used to
set up and make adjustments to the imaging hardware (e.g. camera focusing,
alignment, lane assignment, etc).
• It stores the camera configurations for every "Brightness" setting needed to enable a
packhouse to sort different types of produce over a sorting season. (For example, a
pre-set Brightness called "Light" might store the camera settings required to capture
images of "light" colored apple varieties (such as Granny Smith), whereas a
Brightness called "Dark" might store the settings required to sort darker varieties
(such as Red Delicious and Gala).
• It stores settings required for controlling the cameras when the sorter is running,
automatically adjusting settings (e.g. changing camera gains) to compensate for
variations in lighting over time (mainly due to temperature changes).
• It provides advanced tools for developers and technicians, for analysis and camera
calibration and testing purposes.
This Section provides some conceptual information and describes the screen
functionality.
Important:
Please note that only Compac Technicians or trained Advanced Operators should make
changes to settings in this screen. Also, the physical cameras should never be adjusted,
unless under the direction of a Compac Technician.
What is an ROI?
An ROI is simply a red rectangle, drawn on an image in the Iris Setting Screen, to define
a specific area within the image that you want to analyse. (By default, the red box
outlines the entire image, until a new ROI is drawn inside the image.)
An ROI can be drawn over any part of any image. Once drawn, the data displaying in all
other areas of the Iris Setting screen relates specifically (and only) to the small area you
have defined. The way the graphical data is presented depends upon on the “View” you
have selected.
5
6
4
Note that not all data Views available in area above are necessarily visible. Views
can be turned “on” and “off” as required.
Area Description
Iris Setting menu
Menu options specific to the Iris Setting screen.
See "Iris Setting menu options overview" below (Page 79).
Camera setting toolbar
Toolbar used to set up Brightness levels and calibrate the cameras.
See “The Camera setting toolbar” (Page 81).
"Views" data display area
Camera image and statistical measurements displayed graphically for the
currently selected Region of Interest (ROI). Each view is explained below.
Image view
Displays an image from the camera or a loaded image. Used to draw an ROI
to display data against. The green line is the transition point between
incoming and outgoing cameras and is used to physically mount cameras.
The blue line is the centre of the image and is used to calibrate cameras.
Statistics view
Displays the numerical statistics for the current ROI for the selected camera.
This view is very useful for diagnosing camera and lighting problems.
Area Description
Brightness view
Displays a graphical view of the ROI average values from the Statistics view.
The average values are displayed with a wide colored line. Minimum and
maximum values from the statistics view are displayed with narrow lines.
This view is used during camera calibration and camera matching.
See also “More about the ‘Brightness’ view” below.
Profile views
Displays both vertical and horizontal profiles of the ROI.
Profiles are used by Compac Developers and Technicians for testing
purposes. Each profile is a graph of image intensity (Red, Green and Blue)
averaged one way or the other over the current ROI. For example, each point
on the horizontal profile is an average of the R, G and B values for points that
have the same horizontal position in the ROI. Each such average will come
from a vertical line across the ROI.
Area Description
Setting Used to select, add or remove a Brightness setting, and to select the
camera to calibrate against that setting.
Gain Used to modify the current camera (if the produce image is too dark or too
light) by manually adjusting the Red, Master and Blue Gains on the
currently selected camera:
• Red adjusts the Green to Red gains
• Blue adjusts the Yellow to Blue gains
• Master adjusts the brightness of all the colors.
Used also to set the Brightness’s OK Range against a specific Patch area,
and to record a Patch name for the Brightness settings.
All Used to control features that should be common to all cameras (i.e. shutter
Cameras speed and gamma).
Area Description
ACC Used to load the current ACC Region of Interest and show it in the image
(as a blue rectangle), and to change and update the ACC ROI on ALL
cameras after having set a new ACC ROI (over a grey patch in the ACC
Chart) and after making sure that the Red, Green and Blue bars in the
Brightness view are as close as possible to the ACC OK range.
The Fruit Limits screen is used to define the outer area and the centers of the carriers
that need to be “seen” to enable the largest pieces of produce over the sorter to be
analysed.
Note that it is better to have boundaries set ‘too wide’ than too small and thereby risk part
of a fruit image not being processed.
Note: Access to the Calibration menu is required to display this screen.
Screen
Note that the bottom half of the screen is blank until a picture is snapped.
These dialogs require a response before the function requested can be continued.
The Sizer cannot be running while the requested calibration is being performed. Ensure
the Sizer is stopped before clicking OK (or press Cancel to exit the calibration request).
Sizer must be running to perform this calibration function (e.g. when Setting Fruit Limits).
To enable the carrier rotation speed to be calibrated (on the Master Node only) so that
InVision knows how fast the produce is rotating, the Sizer must be running at normal
operating speed.
More information on rotation speed calibration is provided in the Technician Guide.
Overview
This Section contains the more complex color mapping and grading concepts
and functions for advanced users.
Before performing advanced grading you will need to understand basic color
mapping and grading set up (see Section 2 (Page 25) and the Tutorials (Page
246) in Appendix A).
While major grading options (Blemish, Dimension, Texture, etc) are explained
fully in their own Sections, other color mapping options and less frequently used
grading options, are described here.
In this Section
Page
Summary of Grading Options ........................................................................... 86
Getting Started with Advanced Grading ........................................................... 89
How InVision Grades ................................................................................... 89
Select Category (and Characteristics) window options ............................... 91
The Grade Grid Right-click Menu ................................................................ 94
Guidelines for Grading...................................................................................... 96
Setting Cut-off Point Values for Grading ..................................................... 96
Overlapping values ...................................................................................... 96
Criterion Linking ........................................................................................... 96
Grade Title Colorization ............................................................................... 98
Grading on "Good" produce color versus "Bad" produce color ................... 99
Using the Histogram data to fine-tune cut-off point values........................ 100
Avoiding Gaps between Grades ................................................................ 102
Using ‘OR’ Condition Grading ................................................................... 103
Special Advanced Features - Power Settings and Seed Editing .............. 107
Using Captured Images to Refine Grading .................................................... 109
Capturing Single Pieces of Sample Produce ............................................ 109
Understanding the Fruit Capture Grid Toolbar and Fields ........................ 110
Capturing a Random Sample of Produce Images ..................................... 112
About Viewing (and Saving) Captured Produce Images ........................... 112
Setting up Capture options ........................................................................ 113
Capturing Images Automatically for Grading Analysis .............................. 116
Advanced Color Grading Options ................................................................... 117
Grading using Function Color (or Uniform Color) ...................................... 117
Grading on Color Combinations ................................................................ 126
Grading using 'Ignore' Fruit Color Mode (for fruit with labels) ................... 128
Grading by Lanes (using Quality by Lane) ................................................ 129
Grading by Quality and Grade Optimization .............................................. 130
Grading More than One Variety: Using Split Vision .................................. 137
InVision offers a variety of grading options, depending on your InVision model (see
"InVision Series and Models" (Page 8) in Section 1).
Grading option Description Availability
Color Used to make produce consistent in All InVision Color
grades based on color. models - (5000, 7000
and 9000) - e.g. 5000C
or 5000CIR.
Size and Shape Used to make produce consistent in All InVision models
(Dimension) grades based on size, shape, or other (5000, 7000 and 9000).
diameter or volume values.
Defect Used to sort produce based on the InVision models 7000
presence of surface marks and 9000 only.
(blemishes/blobs) that affect the
produce quality.
Texture Used to sort product based on the Usually InVision 9000C,
presence of creases, ridges and but other model options
coarse skin. may become available.
Special Used to detect special produce All InVision models
positioning and imaging problems (5000, 7000 and 9000).
and (doubles, touching, slippage, etc).
These options are explained in more detail in this Section, with references provided to
additional information.
Grading measurements
Grading is based on three kinds of measurements:
• Continuous measurements (% or Area measurements)
These measure the amount of some property (e.g. percentage or area of color, sizes,
degree of elongation). These are calculated as decimal numbers, such as 47.3% or
12.1. Most measurements are continuous measurements.
• Discrete measurements (measurements in whole numbers, i.e. no decimal points)
These apply to counts of blobs (of a certain size or characteristic) and to lane IDs.
• Yes/No values (which apply only to “Special” grades)
Special grades override all other grading criteria (e.g. “touching" produce is either
touching or not, and it doesn't matter whether a piece of touching produce meets any
other grading criteria). See “Special grades” following.
Special grades
When grading, InVision first checks whether produce matches any of the criteria for any
characteristic set up in the "Specials" category. Special grades are most commonly used
to identify produce that has imaging problems, so that they can be assigned to a Recycle
Grade for further sorting. Special grades override any other grading criteria and when a
special grade is selected, all other grading criteria is cleared. For example, if touching fruit
are assigned to the Recycle Grade, it doesn't matter if the fruit are perfect in color and
size and should be Grade A, they will be recycled.
For more information, see "‘Special Grades’ to Resolve Imaging and Positioning
Problems” (Page 152) in Section 5.
Window
10
11
12
13
Category options
Category Description
Fruit color – for standard color grading
Options are:
Create a new color
• Add a new color Characteristic to your Grade Grid for color mapping, and
setting up of Grade Grid values (if grading on this color is required).
See “3. Add Fruit Color Characteristics and Grades” (Page 251) in Tutorial 1
in Appendix A.
Create a combination of two existing colors
• For more complex grading requirements, you can combine colors in Grade
Grids, for example if you need to grade on shades of a certain color (e.g. light
red, red, dark red) and on the color as a whole (e.g. any red color).
See “Grading on Color Combinations” (Page 126) in this Section.
Show the conveyor color
• This allows grading on an amount of very dark marks (without using blemish
grading).
• InVision measures colors, after a user tells the software to "Learn" a color, by
counting pixels that map to each logical color. InVision initially counts all colors,
including the conveyor color, but does not necessarily present them in its final
results. If the conveyor color is added to the Grade Grid, or combined with
other colors, then it will be counted.
For example, with only one fruit color, even if there are dark spots on the fruit
that are colored like the conveyor, these will not be counted, and the fruit will be
measured as 100% of the fruit color.
• With two or more "normal" colors in the Color Map, the conveyor color is
excluded from the fruit color total, and the total of the color percentages will add
up to 100%.
• If a combination color is created that involves a combination with the conveyor
color, then the conveyor color will be counted. The total of the individual fruit
colors will total to less than or equal to 100%.
• See “Example 2: Combining “bad” colors with Conveyor” (Page 127) in
“Grading on Color Combinations” in this Section.
Function color – for function color grading
Function color grading grades produce by the average appearance of the entire
piece of produce. Instead of counting how much area of the produce is covered by
a certain color, InVision allows you to calculate certain properties ("functions") of
the color, such as redness (for tomatoes) or the brightness of yellow (for lemons).
Standard “functions” are provided by InVision.
See “Grading using Function Color (or Uniform Color) Grading” (Page 117) in
this Section.
Defect color – undesirable marks
Grade on amount of surface defects. Available on InVision 7000 and 9000 systems
only.
See Tutorial 3 (Page 296) in Appendix A, and Section 6 – Blemish (or Blob)
Grading (Page 162).
Stem / Calyx – Navel / button size
Grade on size of stem and/or calyx marks. Available on InVision 7000 and 9000
systems only.
See “Stem / Calyx Size” (Page 182) in “Set up your Grade Map for Blemish
Grading” in Section 6.
Category Description
Blob Distribution
Grade on the distribution of blobs (i.e. marks) spread over an area of the produce.
Available on InVision 7000 and 9000 systems only.
See Section 6 – Blemish (or Blob) Grading (Page 162).
Fruit shape – elongation, flatness, symmetry, etc.
Grade on certain shape properties of produce, and eliminate produce with
undesirable shapes.
See “Grading by Shape” (Page 145) in Section 5.
Fruit size – Diameter, volume
Grade on produce diameter, volume and certain other options.
In most cases these measurements are sent to Sizer and used there, i.e. they are
generally not used as part of the vision grading. (They will be sent to Sizer even if
you do not have a Size category set up in your grid.)
See “Grading by Size (Diameter and Volume)” (Page 141) in Section 5.
Specials – doubles, touching, oversize etc.
Using special grades, InVision can recognise images of fruit that have special
problems during imaging, such as two pieces of produce touching, or onions with
thick elongated stems or loose skin, and then assign them to a predetermined
grade.
See "‘Special’ Grades to Resolve Imaging and Positioning Problems" (Page
152) in Section 5.
Quality by lane
Grade produce based on the lane where the produce is located on the sorting
machine. Enables a lane number (or a range of lane numbers) to be entered as a
grading Characteristic. For example, produce in one lane could be assigned to
Grades A, B or C, and produce in another lane assigned to C and D. This is useful
if produce is pre-sorted. (Note that you can right click on the Lane Characteristic’s
cut-off points to add an OR condition to specify more than one Lane range for the
Grade.
See "Grading by Lanes (using Quality by Lane)” (Page 129) in this Section.
Internal properties
Grade produce based on information received from an internal quality system (e.g.
firmness testing) if installed on the inspection section of the sorter.
Texture
Grade on surface texture, if texture grading software has been added on to your
InVision system.
See Section 7 – Texture Grading (Page 192).
Quality (use optimizer formula)
Grade the produce by a general quality instead of rules on each property, for
instance allowing more (cosmetic) defects on dark red apples than on lighter ones.
See “Grading by Quality and Grade Optimization” (Page 130) in this Section.
Classified blobs, options
Allows grading on defect (blob) colors that have particular properties (e.g.
elongated marks may be Hayward lines on kiwifruit, small very dark IR marks may
be punctures, but bigger ones are probably not). Available on InVision 7000 and
9000 only.
See Section 6 – Blemish (or Blob) Grading (Page 162).
Function Description
Classification rules Enables you to set the rules for Classified Blob grading.
(Note: Blemish grading is not available on InVision 5000
systems.) See “Classified Blobs” (Page 184) in “Set up your
Grade Map for Blemish Grading” in Section 6.
Show Histogram Enabled only against Characteristics. Displays an
accumulation-style histogram of the selected Characteristic’s
values for all produce that has been processed since the last
histogram reset.
This allows you to see at a glance the sort of value you should
set as a cut-off for the characteristic to enable a certain
percentage of the produce to be classified as a grade.
See “Using the Histogram data to fine-tune cut-off point
values” (Page 100) in “Guidelines for Grading” in this
Section.
Reset All This resets the histogram mechanism.
Histograms
Disable Allows you to disable and enable the currently selected Grade
Enable or Characteristic or Grade cell criteria (i.e. the cut-off point
values for a grade).
When a Grade is disabled, the grade title is colored grey. Use
this option to temporarily prevent produce from getting to a
grade (e.g. because you are not packing that grade today, or
for testing). Produce sorted to a disabled grade will drop to an
appropriate grade to the right of the disabled grade (usually
the next grade). This option may be helpful if you do not sell
fruit to some markets at some times.
When a Characteristic and/or its grade cut-off point values is
disabled, the Grade row or cell is colored grey. Use this option
if you have a Characteristic targeting a specific defect (e.g.
when running a batch that has this defect you will want to turn
this characteristic on, but on other batches you will want to turn
it off. When a Characteristic or its grading criteria is disabled, it
is not considered when grading the produce, so any ‘offending’
produce is considered to be OK.
Remove all criterion Right-click the mouse in any linked Cut-off Point cell in a
linking Characteristic row (linked cells are colored pink by default, or
may be custom colored) and then select this option to remove
the linking between all the grouped cells.
(Note: Cell linking is applied by holding down the Ctrl key and
then clicking the Grade Gride cut-off point cells. Releasing the
Ctrl key displays a linking dialogue box.)
See “Criterion Linking” (Page 96) in “Setting Cut-off Point
Values for Grading” in this Section.
InVision can grade on many produce Characteristics, but most commonly grades on
Color. Most Characteristics require Cut-off Point values set across the Grade Grid to tell
InVision how to compute the grade a piece of produce should achieve.
Overlapping values
To ensure that produce achieves the most appropriate grade, when setting a Cut-off Point
value for a Characteristic for a grade we recommend that you set only one of the values
in each cell to specify the acceptable range.
For example, allow 0 to 5 percent of a color in Grade A, and 0 to 10 percent of the color
in Grade B (instead of 0 to 5 percent in A, and 5 to 10 percent in B).
For more information on overlapping values, see "Avoiding Gaps Between Grades"
(Page 102) in this Section.
Criterion Linking
Grade Grid cut-off point cells can be linked allowing a range of cut-points to be replicated
across any number of grades for an individual Characteristic. Multiple (and non-
consecutive) grade cells can be linked.
Grade cut-off points are usually linked for ease of maintenance.
For example, a lemon Variety may have several grades for different shades plus a final
grade for variegated lemons. All the ‘good’ grades will have the same cut-off point on
‘color variation’. Linking all these grades makes the Variety easier to maintain. If we need
to change the variegation on one grade then we will probably also need to change it to
the same cut-off points on all grades.
Similarly, when grading oranges to Grade 1, Grade 2, Green and Juice, you would
generally use the same cut-off points for Green in Grade 1 and Grade 2.
To link cells
Hold down the Ctrl key and click once in a Grade cell you want linked. Click once in each
of the other Grade cells you want linked. Grades selected for linking become grey.
Release Ctrl and respond Yes to the linking question. By default the cells become pink
(although the color can be customised).
Now any value entered into one linked Grade, is replicated across the other linked
Grade(s). Cut-off points for linked Grades cannot be individually changed.
Grey (Disabled)
Grey indicates a grade is disabled. Produce will not be sent to a disabled grade.
Use this feature to temporarily stop produce being sorted to a grade. In the example
above, Grade A is disabled to effectively ‘merge’ the first two grades (e.g. we do not
require an export grade for this batch of produce today).
Re-enable a grade by right clicking on the grey heading and selecting Enable Grade.
Red (Gaps)
Red indicates there are gaps or holes in the grading cut-off point values and some
produce will not be able to achieve a grade at all.
In the example above, produce with a bad area over 300 does not have a valid grade to
be assigned to. In this case InVision will assign the produce to the grade it thinks is most
suitable.
Note that you can have gaps in grades without the headings becoming red. See
“Avoiding Gaps between Grades” (Page 102) in this Section.
Yellow indicates there are grade values set up that will never allow produce to be graded
to them.
In the example above, produce cannot reach Grade D because Grade C is already set to
the maximum cut-off values.
Both ways of setting up grading are valid and, in certain situations, you may have to use
both together. Grading based on bad color may be simpler because it makes all your cut
point ranges in the “0 to x percent” format. Many users find “0 to x percent” grading values
easier to understand.
You may have to change your cut-off point values if this grading did not give the desired
separation. For example if you got fruit with too much yellow in the B grade, you might
need to reduce the yellow percentage value for Grade B to say 0.0 to 15.0 to force those
fruit into Grade C.
Histogram data is collected in the Info screen (under the Histogram tab), but the data is
best viewed against Characteristics in the Variety or Offline variety screens.
Data is collected and retained from the time you started the InVision system or from since
the last histogram reset.
The histogram graphical view allows you to determine the percentage of produce above
or below your specified cut-off point. This enables you to estimate the percentage of
produce that meets, or does not meet, your grading criteria.
To view a histogram, right click on any Characteristic and select Show Histogram from
the menu.
To exit the Histogram window, click Variety (or any other screen option).
To understand the Histogram data, see the two examples below.
The graph shows, for every X value, the % of fruit that are below this value.
If you look at the diagram below, 85% of the fruit have less than 5 units of IR, 90% have
less than 10, and 95% have less than 20.
95% - less
than 20 units
of defect
You can use this to estimate what percentage of produce will be in or out of grade if you
use a particular cut-point. i.e. if you set your cut point so that up to 20 units of IR are
allowed in your good grade you can expect about 5% rejects
You can also use the steepness of the graph to see how much of a change in grading %
a change to the cut-point will make. (See the yellow lines above.)
If your current cut-point is currently 10, then changing it by 5 (down to 5 or up to15) will
add or remove about 5% of the fruit.
However, if the cut-point is currently 80 then changing it by 10 (down to 70 or up to 90)
will only affect approximately 1% of the fruit.
99.95 -
below 200
99.4 - below 25
99.3 - between 0 and 10
In the graph above, 99.3% of the fruit are between 0 and 10 units, 99.4% are below 25,
and 99.95% are below 200.
This graph tells us that if the cut-point for Grade C is 0 to 150 we can expect 99.9% of our
fruit to be below that cut-point (i.e. good for Grade C or better) and less than 0.1% to have
values higher than Grade C and therefore graded to Grade D. (See yellow square above.)
It also tells us that if our Grade A cut-point is 0 to 3 and if we want a bit more fruit in
Grade A, then changing the cut point to 8 will not achieve any more A Grade fruit
because the line is flat (horizontal) up to about 10. We would need to adjust the cut-point
above 10. (See yellow circle in the example above.)
If you do not keep either the minimum or the maximum value fixed in your grade map, you
may not have overlapping grades. This can cause problems if you accidentally create
gaps between the grades. When you have gaps, some produce cannot be graded.
An example of a gap would be to set up the A grade to allow 0 to 5% of a characteristic,
and B grade to allow 10 to 20%. Any fruit between 5 to 10% cannot be assigned to A or
B grade.
Even if all your cut-off points between grades match up, you can still get gaps, as shown
in the example grade map below:
When you look closely at the yellow and green rows individually, they both seem correct
(i.e. there are no gaps in the Yellow row, and there are no gaps in the Green row).
However, when you look at them together, you notice that there are gaps between most
of the grades. We explain this further in the two examples below.
Example 1
Fruit 1 in the Grade Grid below is 9% yellow and 9% green.
Yellow achieves Grade A, but Green achieves Grade B.
Since fruit must pass ALL characteristics in a Grade column to achieve a grade, this piece
of fruit fails all criteria until it reaches Grade E. The fruit should probably have been a
Grade B.
Yellow 9% 0.0 to 10.0 10.0 to 20.0 20.0 to 40.0 40.0 to 80.0 0.0 to 100.0
Green 9% 0.0 to 6.0 6.0 to 10.0 10.0 to 20.0 20.0 to 30.0 0.0 to 100.0
Example 2
Fruit 2 in the Grade Grid below is 20% yellow and 5% green.
Yellow achieves Grade B, but Green achieves Grade A.
This piece of fruit also fails all criteria until it reaches Grade E, and should be a Grade B.
Yellow 20% 0.0 to 10.0 10.0 to 20.0 20.0 to 40.0 40.0 to 80.0 0.0 to 100.0
Green 5% 0.0 to 6.0 6.0 to 10.0 10.0 to 20.0 20.0 to 30.0 0.0 to 100.0
Solution:
Fix grading for both fruit by reinstating overlapping grades (see the Fruit 2 example in the
Grade Grid below):
Yellow 20% 0.0 to 10.0 0.0 to 20.0 0.0 to 40.0 0.0 to 80.0 0.0 to 100.0
Green 5% 0.0 to 6.0 0.0 to 10.0 0.0 to 20.0 0.0 to 30.0 0.0 to 100.0
The Add OR condition option is accessed from the right-click mouse menu with the
cursor positioned on a grade cell.
There are 2 types of “OR” conditions: “OR grades” and “OR criteria”.
OR grades are created by right-clicking on a Grade Title. This adds another column to
the grade. A piece of produce will achieve this grade if it satisfies all the criteria for at
least one of the columns within the grade.
OR criteria is created by adding another criterion to a criteria (a cell in the grid). A piece
of produce needs to satisfy at least one of the criteria to match the requirements for that
cell.
The example scenario below is provided only to demonstrate the difference between the
options. Grading would not normally be set up in this way.
Step 2 – Set up lane criteria in Grade A to allow more than one lane to be specified
Right click in the Grade A cell against the Lane Category, and add an “OR Condition”.
Specify that fruit from Lane 1 or Lane 4 will be Grade A by default. This is adding an “OR
criteria”. Example:
Step 3 – Add another Grade A column for grading good fruit from Lanes 2 and 3
Right click in the Grade A heading and add an “OR condition”. This is adding an “OR
grade”.
In the second Grade A column, specify the cut-off point percentage for Bad fruit before it
is downgraded to a lower grade (e.g. 0.0 to 1.0).
Because InVision grades from left to right (even when OR grades are added), while fruit
from Lanes 2 and 3 will fail the first Grade A criteria (not being from Lane 1 or 4), they can
achieve the second Grade A criteria (being less than 1% Bad). Example:
Note that the following two features are only available for very advanced users logged in
at the Advanced Client user setting (level 4).
Because the power number for the orange color is stronger, more of the area gets
mapped to orange.
Warning:
Be aware that every boundary between any color and the color you change will be
affected.
Also, if the map has many seeds close to the boundary lines, there may be no room for
the line to move and changing power may not have any effect at all.
The screen displays the Color Seeds for the currently selected Color Map tab (e.g. Fruit
Colors, Good Skin, Blobs, Blob Color) and for the selected color mode (Color or IR).
In this screen you can:
• change the RGB and IR values of individual seeds (see Note: below).
• delete a seed by changing it to the exact values of another seed.
• change the sort order by clicking on any of the column headings.
Note: You cannot change the Reduced to color characteristic name that a seed is
mapped to (however the background color may change depending on the values
entered). For example fields "dark red 128, 4, 55, 77" could be changed to "dark red 44,
33, 65, 2", but not to "light purple 128, 4, 55, 77".
In a normal production environment, InVision does not display or retain produce images.
"Capturing" (by clicking Start Capture or pressing F9) lets you retain images and display
them on your screen. You can use these images to test and fine-tune your grading.
Important notes:
• While you can capture produce images at any time, capturing uses a lot of the
computer’s resources. To prevent sorting being impacted, InVision will only capture
produce when it has spare time.
• InVision can only capture one piece of produce at a time. If capturing while grading,
InVision will randomly select the fruit for capture. If capturing on an empty machine
when you are not grading, leave a gap of about 1m (10 carriers) between the pieces
of produce.
• Fruit are captured with the camera setting as set by the Brightness Setting of the
Online Variety (not the Offline Variety) in the Fruit Variety Information window.
Therefore, if you are trying to work with captures in an Offline variety, you will need to
make sure the captures are taken with the correct Brightness Setting.
If your Online and Offline Varieties are using different brightness settings (e.g.
Online Variety is Light, but Offline Variety is Medium), then when you press F9
to capture images, the online Variety editor will display the captures, but the
Offline editor will not. In that circumstance, the Offline editor will ignore them,
because the brightness levels are wrong and color mapping against the images
will be incorrect.
If you manually try to load fruit images captured with wrong Brightness Settings
in either the Online or Offline Varieties (e.g. old captures), a warning message
will display (unless you are logged in at a very high access level.)
1. With the sorting machine running empty, on the Fruit Capture toolbar click the
Start Capture button, or press F9 from any screen.
All previously saved images of produce are cleared.
2. Run a single piece of sample produce across the sorter and through the InVision
cabinet.
The capture displays as a line in the Fruit Capture Grid. A capture consists of
multiple images of one piece of produce as it rotates through the InVision cabinet.
3. Wait a few seconds and run another piece of sample produce. Repeat this step as
often as necessary.
Note: The maximum number of captures that can be taken in one capture session
is usually between 10 and 15, depending upon your InVision computer's memory
resources.
Button Description
Click to start capturing produce; click again to stop capturing. To
stop and immediately restart capturing, press the F9 button. Note
that any existing captures displayed in the Fruit Capture List will be
cleared (when starting, not stopping).
This button displays as pressed when the machine is capturing.
Reprocess all captured images to measure all properties and
reassign their grades. This re-grading also happens automatically
when certain other actions are performed, such as adding new
grading criteria. This allows you to check if the current grading setup
is achieving the desired grading results.
This button flashes to remind you to re-grade if the grading rules (in
the grade grid) have changed. This indicates that the grades in the
fruit capture grid might not be correct as per the current rules.
Opens the Setup Capture data screen. Allows you to set up rules for
capturing certain produce images (e.g. Grade A fruit on two lanes
only; or fruit with a certain shape or color).
See “Setting up Capture options” (Page 113) in this Section.
Button Description
Loads a previously saved produce image. You can load multiple
captured sequences at a time by multi-selecting files in the File
Open window.
Note: Captured images from a different machine or software version
might sometimes not load correctly.
Saves the currently highlighted produce image to disk (file). This
button will be disabled until you click on a row of captured data to
select a piece of produce. Available in advanced user access level
and above. See “How To Save and View Captured Images” (Page
113) in this Section.
Clear the Fruit Capture Grid of all captured or loaded produce.
Field Description
Computer Vision node number (if the system has several computers/nodes).
Fruit Index of the fruit (the order it was loaded to the grid).
File name Name of the file, if the image was loaded from a previous Save.
Lane Lane the piece of produce was captured on.
Grade Grade assigned to the piece of produce.
Major diameter Diameter values for the piece of produce. Present if diameter
and Minor grading is on for the Variety. See Note below.
diameter
Volume Volume value for the piece of produce. Present if volume grading is
on for the Variety. See Note below.
Characteristics Each Characteristic set up in the Grade Grid has a column in the
Fruit Capture Grid. Each capture displays the measurements
achieved against all Characteristics.
Note: The Major Diameter, Minor Diameter and Volume sizes are based on size
calibration of the correct lane at the time of capturing (stored in the capture files). That
means that if you recalibrate diameters on a lane you will see the changes for new fruit
captured but not on any old captures.
When running the Start Capture function during production, InVision saves images of
random fruit as they pass under the camera. It does NOT capture all fruit across the
sorter. You should expect approximately one capture every ten seconds.
1. With the sorting machine running produce, click the Start Capture button (in the
Fruit Capture toolbar), or press F9.
All previously saved images of produce are cleared.
2. Captures continue until InVision reaches its maximum amount of saved images.
The capture then stops automatically.
Note: If you want to selectively capture produce with certain characteristics, see "Setting
up Capture options" (Page 113) in this Section.
You can view Captured images in the Variety or Offline screens, as well as in the Images
screen.
The Fruit Capture Grid displays your captures, and you can load any of your saved
captures. Captures are overwritten each time you run a new Capture, so save any
captures you wish to retain for future use.
File Types
When saving captures to disk, InVision creates three sets of files based on the file name
you provide. The files have file extensions .cap, .seq and .bmp). If you are copying
captured images to another location, be sure to copy all of these files. However, when
loading captured files, only the .cap file is displayed for selection.
To change the capture criteria, see “Setting up Capture options” (Page 113) in this
Section.
For more information, see "How to Save and View Captured Images" following.
To… then…
save a captured image click Save Fruit on the toolbar. In the Save As window,
to disk navigate to your fruit captures folder. Change the default file
name (*.cap) to a meaningful name for your capture (e.g.
Sunburn.cap) and click Save.
load previously saved click Load Fruit on the toolbar. In the Open window,
images to see the navigate to your fruit captures folder. Select the required
grading result .cap images and click Open. The captures display in the
Fruit Capture Grid.
Note: Existing captures in the Fruit Capture List are not
cleared when a new capture is loaded.
see the grading results look at the grading data against each fruit capture. Note:
for captured images Use Grades mode if your fruit capture table is very wide.
display a capture in the click anywhere on the capture in the Fruit Capture List. The
Color Maps and Grade Color Maps area displays the image, and the Grade Grid
Grid areas area shows the detailed grading result for the fruit. (In
Grades mode, look for the red value in the "Active Fruit"
column to see the criteria that determined the grade.)
sort the Captured Fruit click on any heading title to sort the list by that column. Click
List again to reverse the sort order. Note that the sorting does
not handle decimal points correctly.
Note: There are also advanced view functions for captured images in the Images and
Info screens.
Use the Setup Capture option to capture only produce images that meet certain criteria.
Choosing specific images can help you identify problems with the color map or grade grid.
Note however that setting up capture criteria may result in very little or no produce being
captured if the type of produce you are looking for is very rare.
A typical use of this feature is to capture produce only from a specific grade or range of
grades during normal production. For example, if Grade B fruit were being graded to
Grade C incorrectly, you could view images of just the C grade fruit across the sorter to
help analyse the problem.
You can capture images from all lanes or from specific lanes on the sorting machine. You
can add any other criteria, such as the grade range, by pressing the Add Property
button.
1. Click the Setup Capture button to display the Capture Fruits window.
2. Click the check box for each lane you want to capture produce images on, or tick
Use lane 1 settings on all lanes to capture images across all lanes.
3. To select properties for the produce you want to capture, click the Add Property
button to display the Property List.
4. The available properties are grouped by Category. Select the Category you want,
and click on the property you want to add.
The most commonly used properties are under the Grade Map option. Both Grades
and Characteristics (e.g. Colors, Shapes, etc) can be selected.
5. Specify the allowed range for the property you have selected (minimum and
maximum allowed value).
In the example below, Grade C produce only across all lanes has been selected for
capture.
Use this function for capturing large random samples of produce so that Compac can
analyze and improve your machine.
The Auto Capture facility automatically and continually starts and stops the image
capture facility to capture and save fruit images to disk at random. Produce is captured
every minute or so to reduce processor load. Capturing will continue until 1000 pieces of
produce are captured, or the disk reaches its maximum for saved image data.
1. In the Fruit Capture Grid toolbar, click the Auto Capture button.
Note: This works if you are processing large amounts of produce on a reasonably
full machine (at least 10% of cups are full).
If you want to capture every fruit from a small sample when the machine is empty,
click Setup Capture, tick Save all in auto capture mode and then click Auto
Capture.
2. In the Save As window, enter the file name for the captured image set.
All previously saved images of produce are cleared.
InVision will capture images of produce until it reaches its maximum amount of
saved images. The capture will then stop automatically.
If you are sending the images to Compac for analysis, remember to send ALL the
files associated with the file name (e.g. all the .cap, .seq and .bmp files).
Note:
You can stop the capturing manually by clicking Auto Capture again.
You will need to be familiar with basic color mapping principles before attempting these
more advanced color mapping options:
Grading using Function Color (or Uniform Color)
Grading on Color Combinations
Grading using ‘Ignore Fruit Color Mode (for fruit with labels)
(Note: Basic color mapping is explained in Section 2 (Page 25), and in the Tutorials
(Page 246) in Appendix A.)
Note: Function Color grading is not available if your system is set up for Texture grading.
Function color grading allows you to grade on the overall look of the produce, not on of
the existence or amount of specific colors. Instead of counting how much area of the
produce is covered by a certain color, InVision allows you to set up and calculate certain
properties (“functions”) of the color, such as redness (for tomatoes) or the brightness of
yellow (for lemons).
Each Function assigns a piece of produce with a single number that describes the
produce in terms of this function. For instance the Brightness function will give a dark red
apple a low number and a light green apple a higher number. The Color Variation
function will give an evenly colored lemon a low number, and a lemon with yellow and
green colors a high number. Produce can be graded according to these numbers. For
instance tomatoes can be sorted into different shades, with the shade being used as a
good estimate for how long the tomato can be stored before it has to be eaten.
Function grading may simplify the process of defining grading criteria significantly in many
cases.
If you are interested in sorting uniformly colored fruit such as tomatoes and most citrus
into several color grades, then you could do it by mapping several shades of red or
orange and then setting required %’s of each of these colors in the appropriate grades.
Or, instead, you could map all these shades into one fruit color (and maybe an extra ‘bad’
color) and grade on the quality of that color using an appropriate function.
Function grading is also more flexible and easier to adapt to changing market demands
over the season. For instance for some fruit at the beginning of the season, lighter red
colors are acceptable, but as the season progresses, darker colors are required. With
normal color grading you would need to change what colors are mapped to ‘dark red’ as
the season progresses and the market demands get tighter. With function grading, using
a ‘brightness’ function, all you will need to do is to lower the maximum brightness allowed
in your grade to require darker fruit.
In some cases, functions such as Color Variation, Color Roughness and 2nd Color
Variation may be able to find features based on the local distribution of colors that
ordinary color grading can’t see - such as telling the difference between stripe and block
color on red apples.
However, because function grading uses just one number (per function) to describe the
overall look of the fruit, it averages the property over the entire surface area of the fruit
and might not be as accurate as ‘normal’ color grading.
A technical note
Function calculation can be done in two ways:
• calculating the function for every pixel (a point in the picture) and then averaging the
results to get a value for the piece of produce, or
• averaging the colors over the entire piece of produce, and then calculating the
function of the average.
The first method is more accurate mathematically, but requires more computing power. In
practice the difference between the two methods is usually below 5%. InVision allows the
use of one function calculated in the first method (called the Primary function) and
several functions calculated by the second method (called Secondary functions).
• Hue - a generic function that runs through a rainbow-like spectrum of colors. May be
used for green apples.
You may want to try a function for a type of produce that has similar colors to the piece
you want to grade. For example, the Lemon function might give useful results on Granny
Smith or Golden Delicious apple varieties.
These examples illustrate the steps required to grade produce using some of the Function
grading features available.
1. Create a new Variety and in the Fruit Variety Information window, tick Apply
function to first color, select Halvision Tomato, and tick Grade by function
value only.
3. Place sample tomatoes (including very green and very red tomatoes) inside the
camera viewing area and snap an image.
Then map all the tomato colors (including the green and the red) to the Halvision
Tomato color, and the conveyor to Conveyor color. Up to 5 or 7 color seeds
should be sufficient to achieve the color mapping.
4. Set the grading cut-off point values. The shade of the Halvision Tomato Grade
cut-point cell is an indicator of the expected color of the tomato in this Grade.
5. Note that as you change the cut-off point for one grade (either the From or To cut-
point), the next and previous grades (left and right) automatically alter their cut
points to reflect the change:
1. With the tomato variety loaded from Example 1, untick Grade by function value
only.
3. Rename Color1 to Fruit and add another Fruit Color called Stem.
4. We are no longer grading in “Tomato” mode, so the cut-off point ranges are
incorrect, and the Grade titles have turned to red. The cut-points no longer
automatically update when they are changed. Reset the cut-points for Halvision
Tomato using [0 to X] cut-point ranges (e.g. 0.0 to 12.0; 0.0 to 56.0):
5. Snap or capture some more tomato images (if necessary) and color map the
stems to the Stem color, and the red and green skin colors to Fruit. (Note that we
are still mixing all the shades of green and red into just one color.) The Primary
function is only applied to the pixels belonging to the 1st color (in this case Fruit) so
that the pixels mapped to Stem (which is also green) are ignored, giving us a more
accurate indication of the tomato ripeness.
1. Set up a lemon variety with a Primary function ‘Lemon’ but do not select Grade
by function value only.
2. Set up the main color as Lemon and map all the lemon shades into it (generally
requiring 5 to 10 clicks in total).
3. Click Add Color Function, and add the Secondary Color Variation function:
4. Set up 5 grades, Grades A to D are for different shades of even colored lemons,
and Grade E is for variegated.
5. Set the cut-off point values for the Lemon Color Function, and the Color Variation
(Lemon) function:
The cut-points are set so that fruit with Color Variation > 15 are sent to Grade E
Variegated. Grades A through D are colored pink because they are linked for ease
of maintenance.
The Lemon Color Function uses [X to 200] cut-point ranges to sort the non-
variegated fruit into four color shades (e.g. 150 to 200, 100 to 200, 30 to 200, 0 to
200).
Note: This map can be combined with other properties, such as blemish grading.
1. Set up an orange variety and use snapped or captured images to map the good
colors (yellow and orange) into Orange, and the green colors into Green.
3. Add a Category and select Function color – for function color grading to add a
Secondary Function:
Select clementine:
4. Set up and rename 5 Grades and set your cut-off point values against the Green
and Blemish characteristics and the clementine (Orange) function.
In this example:
• Grades A and B are for very good fruit with little green (0.0 to 10.0) and few
defects (0.0 to 25.0). The Clementine function is used to split these into orange
and yellowish fruit (Grade A is set as 0.0 to 80.0).
• Grade C is for fruit that is still not green, but can have more blemish.
• Grade D is for green fruit that is good enough for Grade C or better, so they
can go to degreening.
• Grade E is for fruit with too much blemish that can be used for Juice.
For more complex grading requirements, you can combine colors in Grade Grids.
Color combination is the sum of the value for all the colors that are combined into the
“combination color”. You may combine any colors but it generally makes sense to
combine “good” colors together or “bad” colors together and not mix them.
Using Color Combinations requires a good knowledge of basic color mapping.
In the Select characteristic window, choose the two colors you want to combine.
Set the Grade Grid Cut-off Point values for the Characteristics you are sorting on
(including the combined color), and then test and refine your grading against your
captured fruit images.
Our examples below illustrate how color combinations can be used.
This concept can be extended to 3 or more shades of red and combinations of all or
some of the reds to get very accurate color grading to meet the grading requirement for
some apples in some markets.
Tip: Try to minimize the number of constraints you set. As you can see in the example
above, Grade A requires at least a 70% combination of reds, so by default it can't have
more than 30% green. Therefore, green cut-points do not need to be set.
Grading using 'Ignore' Fruit Color Mode (for fruit with labels)
Note that this feature is very rarely used. The example below describes a packhouse
experiencing problems with labelled fruit, however a better solution is to used
synchronized color and IR (see “Camera synchronization on CIR systems” (Page 211)
in “The Images screen components“ in Section 8).
Labels on produce images might sometimes cause grading problems. Usually you can
just map the labels to a color and not assign any cut points to this color in the grade grid.
However, when trying to detect soft spots on kiwifruit, a change in the IR brightness is an
indicator for soft spots. The labels also trigger the IR soft spots detection. To avoid
detecting stickers as soft spots, set up a new Fruit Color Characteristic (for example
called Sticker or Label) and map the color of the label to the Characteristic. Select the
Ignore Mode for the label color.
Any image with this color in the band will be ignored for color, blemish and texture
grading. The image is still used for shape grading.
The images are matched between Color and IR so that the labels detected in the color
images are excluded from grading also in the IR images.
With Synchronized CIR system the ‘soft’ color can be mapped based on both color and IR
information, so that the labels can be mapped out of it.
Currently this feature is only used to grade fruit that have labels.
5. In the Color Map, map the sticker color to the Sticker Characteristic. If you are
using IR, select the IR tab and map the IR fruit color only.
6. Check the captures in the Images screen, with the Edges mode selected:
Grading using 'Ignore' Fruit Color Mode (for fruit with labels), continued
The orange outline on the image indicates the fruit with sticker images seen in
the band will be ignored for color, blemish and texture grading.
InVision matches Color to IR to ensure the image is ignored in both.
7. Test your grading against captured fruit images and refine the grading as
necessary.
Major grading options (Texture, Blemish, Dimension, etc) are explained in their own
Sections.
Other grading options described here are:
Grading by lanes (using Quality by Lane)
Grading by Quality and Grade Optimization
InVision can grade produce based on the lane that the produce is located on. This option
is particularly useful for directing pre-sorted produce to specific outlets to reduce produce
handling.
Lane based grading is set up by adding a Quality by Lane category in the Grade Grid,
and then specifying which lane(s) should be assigned to each Grade.
In the example below, all fruit are manually pre-sorted. Grade A good fruit are placed on
either Lane 1 or Lane 4. We are confident that our sorters do not sort bad fruit into Grade
A, so no further grade testing is required on these fruit. (“Or condition” grading is also
shown in this example.)
3. For each Grade, select the lane number (or lane number range). You can enter
OR conditions to specify more than one range.
Sometimes we can grade produce based on a total “score” instead of using individual
properties with cut-off point values. This is grading by quality using scale factors.
This simplifies adjusting the grade cut points, because once we set the quality rules
(scale factors) there is just one number to adjust for each grade. However this might not
work with the strict grade standards required in some markets.
Quality grading allows for rules that are more lenient where produce with a good score in
one aspect will tolerate more bad features than produce with a lower score.
For example, instead of specifying that a Grade A apple must have no more than 10%
green; at least 30% dark red; and no more than 20 mm of blemish, we can give the fruit a
good point for every % of dark red, and a bad point for every % of green and for every
mm of blemish. We then sum all the points. Therefore, a good red apple with very few
defects might achieve a score of 80 points, while a paler apple with more blemishes might
only score 50 points. We can now say that a Grade A apple must score above 60 points.
InVision provides two different but related quality grading tools to achieve this:
Quality Grading (manually setting scoring requirements for each grade)
Grade Optimization (setting required %’s for each grade and letting InVision
automatically adjust the cut-off points to achieve the required %)
These options are explained in detail below.
Note: The Quality measure can also be combined with other rules (for example to grade
on Quality, but also to allow no more than 3mm of IR defect (puncture) in Grade A).
Quality Grading
Quality Grading is set up by placing scale factors against your important grading
characteristics and then defining the percentage total counts that must be achieved
before a grade can be assigned.
Example scenario
In this example, we wish to grade fruit according to their overall appeal. On nice red fruit
we will accept more blemishes, while paler greener fruit will tolerate less blemishes.
To achieve this, Red - our good color is given a scale factor of +20; and Blemish – our
bad color is given a scale factor of -50. Sampling captures of good and bad produce
determines that produce must have a total calculated count above 40% to achieve Grade
A.
Deciding on the scale factors is the hardest part of Quality Grading. Good features on the
fruit (such as “red” in this example) are given a positive factor, bad features are given
negative factors (Characteristic “bad” in the example). The magnitude (size) of the
number determines the (relative) importance of the property. In our case bad is 2.5 times
more important than red. After setting initial factors you can capture produce and check if
the quality values match your assessment. If not you can modify the factors. If light
colored fruit achieve a higher quality grade than you would like, and lightly blemished
achieve a lower quality grade, then you might want to increase the red scale factor.
Example procedure
These steps illustrate how you would set up our example grading:
2. Click Add Category, and add the Quality Category to your Grade Grid.
3. Notice that the Scale Factor column and the Quality Characteristic row are
added.
4. Enter some initial Scale Factors against your most important Characteristics in
your Grade Grid. In our example example red is very good, so we factor it by
+20, Defect (bad) is very bad so we factor it -50.
The scale factor you set controls how good or bad a characteristic is for your
produce. A negative scale indicates a bad feature and a positive scale indicates a
good feature. 0 indicates neutral – i.e. the property is not good and is not bad.
The higher the number the more important this feature is (i.e. -10 is as twice as
bad as -5).
5. Run captures or load captured images and review your Quality grading results in
the Fruit Capture List and in the Grade Grid Active Fruit column.
When sampling or running produce, the resulting score for each Grade in the
Active Fruit Match row is converted to a % value, with 0 being the worst
possible produce and 100 being the perfect produce.
In our example above, our bad produce are achieving too higher grade, because
of their high amount of red. We will need to lower our red scale factor.
6. Set your Quality cut-off point percentages against your Quality Characteristic to
achieve the required grading and adjust your scale factors as necessary.
We lowered our red scale factor to 10 and set our cut-points for our grades.
Our Clean red fruit (red above 70%, bad = 0) are A grade. Lower red values
(Clean03) or higher bad (all the blemish) are grades B or C. Note the difference
between blemish07 and blemish 08 - they have exactly the same amount of
blemish but the red is lower on blemish08, sending it to grade C.
8. Remember to Regrade your Fruit Captures as you change your settings and to
save the changes to your Variety.
Grade Optimization
InVision provides a grade optimizer that can automatically adjust grading cut-offs to
achieve a pre-defined percentage of produce in each grade affected. This is particularly
useful for optimizing produce outputs to sorting tables to achieve best use and location of
manual sorters/packers after the initial Sizer/InVision grading has occurred.
You can apply the optimizer to all grades, or just to a subset of grades. You can let the
grade optimizer control certain cut-offs while retaining specific requirements on others.
When you select the Grade Optimization option, InVision automatically provides all the
same Quality fields that are available when you set up a Quality characteristic manually
by adding a new Quality Category – see “Quality Grading” (Page 130).
Therefore, Grade Optimization works exactly like grading on Quality except that InVision
will automatically set the cut-points for the Quality to achieve the grade % you ask for.
Example scenario
In this example, a packhouse is pre-grading oranges. The oranges are waxed after the
automated pre-sort, and then a final manual sort is performed. The waxing and drying
tunnels have fixed capacity and are split into 3 equal tunnels - each tunnel can handle 1/3
of the fruit. Green fruit are sent directly to de-greening (before waxing). By using the
optimization option, the packhouse can arrange their manual sorters more efficiently. The
top 33% of fruit will need no manual sorting, as they will be high grade fruit; the middle
33% will need some sorting; and the bottom 33% will need the most sorting.
To achieve this grading, we set a fixed cut-point for how much green we will allow (25%,
changing to 10%). In the good color range of grades A to C we split the fruit based on the
amount of blemish (with a small percentage of green allowed) so that fruit with very little
Bad blemish are Grade A and fruit with any amount of Bad blemish are acceptable in
Grade C.
(We could also add a grade E for Juice grade, and set a maximum allowed bad value for
all the grades A-D so that very bad fruit go to Juice without any grading, however to keep
this example simple, we do not do it.)
Example procedure
These steps illustrate how you would set up our example grading:
1. Select the Variety you want to optimize grades for.
Notice the current rows and columns in the Grade Map.
2. Change the existing cut-points for Green so that Grades A - C are 0 to 10.
3. Click Edit Variety to open the Fruit Variety Information window. In the Grade
Optimizer Options area, enable the Optimizer and select the grades that you
want the optimizer to apply to.
4. Notice that the Required % and Grade Optimizer rows, and the Scale Factor
column, are all added.
Note: If at any time you want to remove Grade Optimizer features, you will first
need to uncheck the Optimization option in the Fruit Variety Information
window (refer to Step 3 above).
In the example above, the scale factors set for Green (-5) and Bad defect (-50)
are negative to ensure that the highest measures of these characteristics end up
in the lowest grade. You will have to adjust the magnitudes of these scale factors
to get the balance you want between the Characteristics you wish to optimize.
Notice that when you set a scale factor against a Characteristic, the Grades
selected for optimization become merged cells.
In the example above, Grades A through C can only have up to 10% Green.
Actual grading will determine how much defect a piece of produce has and its
ultimate grade.
7. Check and adjust (if necessary) the Required %’s against the Grades to specify
the percentage of optimized produce you want in each grade. When you change
the required percentage for any grade, the last grade automatically changes to
keep the total across the optimized grades at 100%. Note that produce outside
the optimized grades do not contribute to these percentage measurements.
In the example above, produce with up to 10% Green will get split evenly
between the first three grades, depending mainly on how much Defect they also
have. Any produce that is too green is sent to the last grade.
8. When actually running produce, the Grade Optimizer characteristic displays the
Quality Measure for the Active Fruit (see 49.1% in the example below) and the
cut-off values used on the weighted measurement to achieve the required
percentages in each grade.
The Grade Optimizer row is read-only. Values will be automatically assigned and
scaled to certain grading characteristics.
On some occasions, you might want to grade two different Varieties at the same time on
different lanes (for example Lanes 1 to 4 grading Granny Smith apples, while Lanes 5
and 6 grade Galas). InVision can support this as long as separate computers (nodes)
control the separate lane groupings (e.g. one node controls lanes 1 to 4 and a different
node controls Lanes 5 and 6 as in the example above). The user interface for controlling
both Varieties is on the Master computer.
When Split Vision is enabled, the active Variety on the Variety screen is regarded as the
Primary variety, and the variety selected on the Offline screen is the Secondary variety.
The Variety and Offline buttons will display as Primary and Secondary. The default
names “Primary” and Secondary” can be given alternative names by your technician, if
required.
Note that you can still use the machine to grade the same variety on all lanes by
temporary turning Split Vision off.
2. In the Split Vision screen, click the Split Vision check box.
3. Assign a Primary or Secondary Variety to each node of lanes and then click OK.
Note: The Varieties you select must be set up in Sizer to have split grading.
Overview
This Section describes the concepts and provides the instructions for setting up
Dimension Grading in InVision. Dimension grading is used to sort produce into
consistent grades based on size, shape, or other diameter or volume values.
You will require a good working knowledge of color mapping and grading setup
to implement the features described in this Section.
In this Section
Page
About Dimension Grading .............................................................................. 140
When to Use Dimension Grading .............................................................. 140
Grading By Size (Diameter and Volume) ....................................................... 141
Example of Size measurements ................................................................ 141
Grading on Fruit Size Category within InVision ......................................... 141
To set up Size Grading .............................................................................. 142
Diameter Measurement Options................................................................ 143
When to use Minimum, Maximum or Average Diameters ......................... 144
Grading by Shape ........................................................................................... 145
To set up Shape Grading .......................................................................... 145
Shape Grading Characteristic Options ...................................................... 146
‘Special’ Grades to Resolve Imaging and Positioning Problems ................... 152
To set up Special Grading for positioning problems.................................. 152
Special Grading Characteristic Options..................................................... 154
‘Special’ characteristic Modes ................................................................... 155
More about working with Doubled or Touching Produce ............................... 156
Different Ways that Produce Touch........................................................... 156
When to use ‘Treat Split Touching Fruits as Good’ ................................... 157
Fruit Variety Options that affect Size and Shape Grading ............................. 158
Major and Minor Diameter settings............................................................ 158
Diameter filtering options ........................................................................... 159
All other Dimension Grading settings ........................................................ 159
Size and Shape Grading Diagnostics ............................................................. 161
Results in the Fruit Capture Grid and Grade Grid ..................................... 161
Results in the Images view ........................................................................ 161
Dimension Grading grades and sorts produce based on physical dimensions which are
used to identify variations in Size and Shape.
Size Grading is based on diameters or volume; Shape Grading sorts produce according
to their shape (i.e. round versus elongated, or rejecting flat kiwifruit).
Special Grading is related to Dimension Grading. It identifies inconsistencies in produce
placement on the sorting machine so that produce can be graded correctly.
See “When to Use Dimension Grading” below for more information.
Size Grading enables you to grade on produce diameter, volume and certain other
criteria.
Size grading is generally done by the Sizer software program. InVision passes to the
Sizer three size measurements (in addition to the Grade) for each piece of produce.
These are the Major diameter, Minor diameter and Volume. The Operator should
configure which of the different size “types” that can be measured should be passed as
the Major and Minor diameters. It might be a good practice to use the length from stem to
calyx as the Major diameter and the line that is 90 degrees to it (equatorial), as the Minor
diameter.
Because InVision’s size measurements are so accurate (standard deviation typically less
than 1mm), you can also combine InVision’s volume measurements with the Sizer
program’s weight measurements. This allows you to sort produce based on produce
density (weight divided by volume). Produce density is a useful measurement to make
when produce is at risk of being frost damaged, leaving the produce lighter than normal
for its size.
For more information on Diameters, see “Major and Minor Diameter settings” (Page
158) in “Fruit Variety Options that affect Size and Shape Grading” in this Section.
Note: For Size Grading, it is important to have the Color Map set up to detect produce
colors and conveyor colors accurately. Check the produce images by viewing their
Edges. If InVision is not measuring produce edges correctly, the dimension
measurements will not be accurate.
2. Click Edit Variety to open the Fruit Variety Information window and display the
Dimension Grading Options.
3. Select the grading options you require for both the Major diameter and the
Minor diameter.
See “Diameter Measurement Options” (Page 143) and “When to use
Minimum, Maximum or Average Diameters” (Page 144).
6. Click Finish.
The types of diameter options (e.g. Equatorial, Horizontal, etc) are described below.
The three variables (Min, Max and Avg) are explained in “When to use Minimum,
Maximum or Average Diameters” below.
Diameter types Description
Maximal The longest diameter.
Minimal The shortest diameter.
Perpendicular The diameter 90 degrees opposed to the maximal diameter.
Perimeter The diameter that would be obtained with a ring measurement
device.
(Not displayed in diagnostic images.)
Stem The diameter in stem / calyx orientation.
Only available when the Fruit has elongated stem option is
selected.
Equatorial The diameter, 90 degrees opposed to the stem diameter.
You can select this option even if the produce does not have
elongated stem. However the accuracy is not as good as when
the stem is clearly identifiable.
If the produce has elongated stem the equatorial diameter will be
calculated based on the location of the stem.
Otherwise it will be based on the statistical measurement of the
fruit shape.
Grading by Shape
Adding Fruit Shape Category Characteristics to a Grade Map enables grading on a wide
variety of shape and behavioural properties.
Shape grading allows you to identify, reject or regrade produce with undesirable shapes
(e.g. elongation, flatness, lack of symmetry); behaviours (e.g. end-over-end rotation;
vertical instability; orientation) or characteristics (e.g. lack of smoothness; bad stem
angle).
For each Shape Characteristic, the Cut-off Point ranges set in the Grade Map (usually
values between 0 and 100) determine the scale and/or severity of the problem which is
acceptable within a Grade.
Note: Dimension Grading Option settings (in the Fruit Variety Information window) can
also impact your shape grading results. See “Fruit Variety Options that affect Size and
Shape Grading” (Page 158) in this Section for more information.
3. Choose the characteristics appropriate for your grading (see “Shape Grading
Characteristic Options” below). You may want to add all the properties you
think may be useful, and then remove the ones that did not work.
4. Capture a few produce images for your different grades and see which properties
can separate the shape features you require. Then set the cut-off point values.
See “Size and Shape Grading Diagnostics” (Page 161) in this Section.
Important:
For Shape grading, it is important to have the Color Map set up to detect produce colors
and conveyor colors accurately. Check the produce images to be certain that the edge of
the produce as InVision sees it from the images accurately measures the edge of the
actual produce. If InVision is not measuring produce edges correctly, the dimension and
shape measurements will not be accurate.
27% 12%
A low % of elongation indicates a round or
unstemmed fruit. A high % of elongation indicates
an oval or long-stemmed fruit.
60% 33%
A low % of symmetry indicates an asymetrical fruit.
Stem length 0 to 100, Finds produce with excessively long stems (thick,
% where 0 is elongated stems only, e.g. onions).
no stem, Finds stems that were not cut properly on onions.
and 100 is Finds odd shapes on other produce (e.g. oranges
where the to find protuding navels).
stem length Example:
equals the
produce
diameter
0% 6%
The measurement is the length of the stem relative
to the size of the fruit.
90 270
The orientation is indicated by the location of the
stem on the 360 degrees of a circle.
Smoothness 0 to 100, Used to successfully grade Botrytis bumps on the
where 0 is skins of lemons. Measures using the outline of the
very bumpy, fruit images.
and 100 is Example:
smooth
90 100
Information about the different colored bumps can
be viewed. See “Size/Shape/Blemish Viewing
Mode (and Color Overlays)“ (Page 216) in
Section 8.
20% 50%
Vertical 0 to 100, Identifies produce that has changed its axis of
Diameter where 0 is rotation.
Stability stable and Produce displaying this behavior might need
100 is regrading.
unstable Useful for kwifruit and lemons.
Example:
Kiwifruit End 0 to 100, Identifies produce that rotates the wrong way. This
Over End where 0 is causes many of the shape measurements to be
good and a incorrect.
high value is Produce displaying this behavior will need
End Over regrading.
End Useful for kiwifruit or lemons.
Example:
High Low
Roundness 0 to 100, Similar to elongation in that it separates round fruit
where 0 is from elongated fruit.
elongated Useful for separating misshaped red delicious
(e.g. a apples which are not elongated. (Good red
carrot) and delicious apples should have roundness below 80
100 is very – 85%.)
round (e.g. Example:
a ball)
30% 80%
64% 75%
Stem Angle 0 to 180, Measures the angle between the stem and calyx. A
where a low good fruit will measure 180°. A low angle
value is measurement (e.g. 90°) indicates misshapen fruit
misshapen Useful for apples.
fruit and 180 Example:
is a good
fruit
150° 180°
Trapezoid 0 to 180, Measures how parallel the 2 sides of a piece of
Angle where 180 produce are. May be useful for shape grading
is a perfect peppers (bell peppers / capsicum / paprika).
rectangle Example:
and 0 is a
very “flat”
triangle
When produce is not positioned correctly on the sorting machine or not rotating properly,
InVision may have problems grading the produce accurately. Most of the time, InVision
can detect these problems by assigning produce that is badly positioned to a special
grade. This produce can then be recycled or dropped to a sorting table, to achieve better
results.
Example:
The pictures below shows two touching onions, and a carrier on the conveyor that is
holding two small tomatoes (with apples either side to better illustrate the tomatoes sitting
in the carrier together). These are produce positioning problems that InVision can detect.
(For additional information see “More about working with Doubled or Touching
Produce“ (Page 156) in this Section.)
3. Choose the characteristics appropriate for your grading (see “Special Grading
Characteristic Options” below).
4. Check the box in the column for the grade you want to assign the special produce
to.
Note that all Special characteristics can also use one of two modes – Normal or Special.
See “‘Special’ characteristic Modes” following.
• Normal mode grades in the usual manner (i.e. grading is determined by the cut-off
point ranges you set against the grades).
• Special mode provides a tick box instead of allowing cut-off point ranges. Only one
grade (per Special characteristic) can be ticked. For example you can’t set both
Grade A and Grade C to be Doubles. However you can set Grade A as Doubles and
Grade C as Touching, or Grade A as Doubles AND Touching.
Compac recommends using Normal Mode. If required, you can change between Modes
in the Grade Grid. Note that you must select the Grades button to display this option.
When produce is touching, either two large pieces in two consecutive carriers touch
each other, or 3 medium or small pieces bridge over two carriers, or a piece appears to
touch another piece on the conveyor. Touching produce creates problems with InVision's
diameter and edge measurements. It may also alter color grading and severely affect
blemish grading.
When produce is doubled, two small pieces of produce sit on a single carrier. This
creates problems with diameter and edge measurements.
Two small pieces of produce, in a case of “doubles”, might also physically touch each
other. The InVision definition of “touching” is that some part of the area detected as
produce by InVision runs all the way to the left or right edge of the area allowed for the
produce. The InVision definition of "oversize" is that the produce touches the top or
bottom of the area allowed for the produce. This area is controlled by the Fruit Limits in
InVision Calibration.
Normally, “touching” will only occur when produce does appear to touch. However, on
extremely large produce, it is possible to have both “oversize” and “touching” without
having any neighboring produce involved. Equally, it is possible to have genuine
“doubles” that will be either “oversize” or “touching”.
InVision will always attempt to "split" touching produce. The following image shows an
example of a touching onion that has been successfully split:
If the onion image was not split, the pink outline would have extended around the partial
onion to the left, and the white, red and yellow diameter lines would have extended into
the combined onion areas. The shape properties are calculated based on the outline and
certain diameters, leading to possible errors.
Dimension grading options are set up in the Fruit Variety Information window. This topic
covers all the options available and explains how some of the options available can affect
Size and Shape grading.
For all grading of all produce, InVision passes diameter and volume measurements to
Sizer.
In Sizer you can set up sizing by weight; by any of the diameters; or by volume. You can
also use a combination of weights and diameters. The Volume calculation is also used for
Density grading. (Refer to the Sizer manual if you need more information.)
If Sizer is grading on weight, and the measurements are not required, then they are just
ignored. However, if Sizer is grading on Size or Density, then the measurements are
used, and the correct selection of the Major and Minor Diameter types is important.
Therefore, setting up accurate Size grading in InVision requires the correct selection of
the diameter “types”, but setting up Shape grading does not.
Each of the Major and Minor diameter measurement “types” also have three options -
Minimum, Maximum and Average. The “types” and options are explained fully in
“Diameter Measurement Options” (Page 143) and “When to use Minimum, Maximum
or Average Diameters” (Page 144) in “Grading By Size (Diameter and Volume)“ in this
Section.
It is a good practice to set the Major and Minor diameters correctly for your produce, even
when you are sizing by weight, just in case you want to try diameter sizing in the future.
Fruit Variety Options that affect Size and Shape Grading, continued
Fruit Variety Options that affect Size and Shape Grading, continued
Select an option to turn it on; deselect an option to turn it off. All of these options may
affect Size and Shape grading.
(See also “Fruit Variety Information window options” (Page 59) in Section 3 for further
information about each option.)
Option When to use
Double Detection Selects which algorithm to use for detecting ‘double cupping’.
Options are Round (for most fruit), Cherry (for cherries or
plums) or Asymmetric (for potatoes, onions and pears).
Use the Shape measurements to fine tune your Shape Grading accuracy and cut-off
points or your Special grading results.
Note that these diameters are based on the machine calibration at the time of capture.
Therefore, if you recalibrate diameters (with a ball or a chart) the diameters and volume of
existing captures will display values before the recalibration.
Shape values and Special values display against the Characteristics in the Grade
Grid (and also in the Fruit Capture Grid):
All the diameter readings, as numbers, can also be viewed in the Info view.
These can be used to check the accuracy of measurements, by running the same piece
of produce several times and checking for consistency of measurements and comparing
them to the actual value. (Actual values can be determined in a variety of ways. For
example, for some properties (such as diameters) you can measure the actual fruit. For
flatness of kiwifruit there are quality control tools available to assess the measurement
differences between good, medium and bad fruit. Some features, such as curvature,
require more subjective analysis, for example looking at the difference in the bend
between a straight fruit and a bent fruit, and ensuring that the bent fruit has the higher
curvature value).
See also “Viewing Information for Graded Produce (Info Screen)” (Page 230) in
Section 8 – Viewing and Monitoring your Processing.
Overview
This Section describes the concepts and provides the instructions for setting up Blemish
Grading in InVision. Blemish grading enables InVision to sort produce based on surface
defects (which InVision identifies as ‘blobs’ on the produce).
Setting up blemish grading is more complex than setting up other grading criteria. Please
read all the instructions in this Section before setting up blemish grading. Setting up
accurate grading requires several cycles of testing and adjustment of the blemish
characteristics in the Grade Grid.
Tutorial 3 (Page 296) provides practical experience of simple blemish grading.
In this Section
Page
About Blemish Grading................................................................................... 163
When to use Blemish Grading ................................................................... 163
Glossary of Blemish Grading terms ........................................................... 163
Setting up your Variety to perform Blemish Grading ...................................... 165
Getting started ........................................................................................... 165
Set up your Variety and your basic Color Map .......................................... 165
Add the Defect Color characteristic(s) ....................................................... 165
Set up the Color Map for Blemish Grading ................................................ 165
Mapping on the ‘Good Skin’ tab ................................................................ 165
Mapping on the ‘Blobs’ tab ........................................................................ 168
Mapping on the ‘Blob Colors’ tab............................................................... 170
Set the Blemish Grading Parameters for your Variety .............................. 174
Set up your Grade Map for Blemish Grading ............................................ 176
Defect Colors ........................................................................................ 176
Defect Color Modes .............................................................................. 177
Which Defect Color Mode should you use? ......................................... 178
Total Area of Spots ............................................................................... 179
Blob Distribution .................................................................................... 181
Stem / Calyx Size ................................................................................. 182
Classified Blobs .................................................................................... 184
Blob Classification Rules ...................................................................... 187
Total Blob Count ................................................................................... 189
Adjusting Blemish Grading Strictness During Grading .............................. 190
Blemish grading grades the produce based on the presence of areas on the surface of
the produce that are different from the normal surface of the produce.
InVision identifies these areas as “Blobs” on the produce. Identified blobs will include:
• Blemishes and defects, that reduce the quality of the produce – bruises, mold,
marks, cuts.
• Stem and calyx – which are normal features on produce and not blemishes. They
are identified for exclusion purposes.
Normal color grading can be set up to identify obvious blemish areas (e.g. bird lime, big
rot spots, etc) by identifying “bad” colors on produce. So how do you know when you
need color grading and when you need blemish grading? For example, should grading
green patches on a potato be attempted using color grading or blemish grading?
While color grading is easier to set up, blemish grading provides a more sophisticated tool
for defect identification and analysis.
Blemish grading is your only choice when the colors of the blemishes you are interested
in can also appear normally on the produce. The extra processing that occurs with
blemish grading makes it possible to separate concentrations of these subtle colors from
surrounding skin and, more importantly, from the stem and calyx.
Also, blemish grading provides additional analysis of the blemish areas. You can grade
by the number or size of blemishes identified on a piece of produce, as well as the shape
and color of individual blemishes.
Generally, if you can accurately map the specific blemish to a color, then it is easier to
work with color grading. If you are trying to detect a smaller feature, or the color of the
blemish is acceptable in other areas of the produce, blemish grading will provide better
results.
The following definitions explain the most important concepts you need to understand to
set up and test a Blemish grading variety.
Term Explanation
Blemish A defect on the produce surface.
Blob A mark on the produce identified by InVision. A blob may be a
Stem, a calyx, or a blemish.
Blobs tab Used to map areas of the produce as either ‘blobs’ or normal skin.
Blob Colors tab Used to map identified blobs into separate colors (i.e. black blobs or
brown blobs).
Good Skin tab Sets the contrast adjustment to ensure that the blob areas on fruit
are clearly visible to InVision. Blobs must appear dark against the
good skin.
Term Explanation
Color Seeds As in the Fruit Color map, a “click” records a color seed which is
taken as a sample of the color at the exact spot (i.e. pixel) where
you clicked. Color seeds are recorded against a specific tab, and
displayed (in tab order) in the Grading Status Bar. Seeds in the
currently open tab can be removed by clicking “Undo”.
Color/Infrared Available if your system has Infrared (IR) cameras.
views If your system is pixel synchronized, these are the two different
views (Color or IR) of the same picture. If your system is not
synchronized, then these are two views of two independent
pictures.
Some blemishes can only be detected by IR cameras. Turning IR
view on (using the Color/IR button in the Color Maps area) enables
you to perform the same mapping functions using IR images.
The IR view is useful for detecting some defects and for separating
severe defects (such as punctures) from non-severe ones.
Defect Color A characteristic used in the Grade Map to set the cut-off points for
characteristic blemish grading. (More than one Defect Color characteristic can be
used if necessary.)
Getting started
You should be familiar with Color Grading and Color Mapping before you attempt Blemish
Grading. The basic steps to set up Blemish Grading are:
• Start with a completed standard color map for your blemish variety.
• Add at least one Defect Color characteristic.
• Set up your Color Map for Blemish Grading:
• Perform good skin mapping on the Good Skin tab
• Perform blob mapping on the Blobs tab
• Perform blob color mapping on the Blob Colors tab (if you are using more than 1
blemish color).
• Adjust the Blemish Grading Parameters for your variety.
• Set up your Grade Map cut points for Blemish Grading.
Practise with most of these functions is provided in Tutorial 3 (Page 296) in Appendix A.
If you haven’t already done so, set up your Variety with a standard Color Map.
Default blemish parameters can be applied now, or later, by choosing an appropriate
“type + blemish” fruit type in the Fruit Variety Information window, for example:
Blemish parameters are discussed in more detail in “Set the Blemish Grading
Parameters for your Variety” (Page 174) in this Section.
To begin Blemish Grading, add at least one Defect Color characteristic to your Variety’s
Grade Map by clicking Add Category in your grade map and selecting Defect color.
This lets InVision know that you wish to use Blemish Grading, and enables the Blemish
Grading related tabs on your Color Map.
Any other result will significantly reduce the capability of the blemish grading system.
2. Select the Mode, and then adjust the Contrast and Brightness sliders until the good
areas of the produce are a uniform grey color, and any blemishes (including the stem
and calyx) are darkly colored.
Note: You would typically select Negative mode from the drop box, and then set the
Contrast between 10 and 60, and the Brightness to 100.
Tips:
• Use the mouse to drag the sliders. Do not release the mouse button until the
slider position and the resulting picture is to your satisfaction.
• Positive mode sets the produce to have the darkest color. Negative mode sets
the background to have the darkest color.
In the image below, notice that the red to green transitions on the apple appear a
uniform grey in the processed image, but the calyx is still visible as a dark mark. This
is a good result.
3. If any colors are saturated (i.e. too bright to see clearly), InVision marks the saturated
pixels in dark blue in the Good Skin map. These pixels are excluded from blob
detection. If large areas of the produce are saturated, you may have an incorrect Iris
setting; contact your Compac Technician.
Example of saturation:
4. When you have achieved the correct result, Apply Changes for the Variety and go to
“Mapping on the ‘Blobs’ tab”.
Mapping blobs
1. Capture or load images of sample produce. You should work with a selection of
produce that is both blemished and clean.
2. Click the Blobs tab. This tab is only enabled once you load a Captured Fruit Image
and have a Defect Color in your grade map.
The Fruit and Conveyor buttons are now replaced by the Blob and No Blob buttons.
The captured images are shown in the top half of the window, and the processed
image in the bottom half. In the processed image:
• Light Blue areas are those identified as No Blob
• Black areas are those identified as Blob
• Dark blue areas are not processed for Blemish Grading.
3. Use the Blob and No Blob cursor buttons to select areas of the produce surface that
do and do not have blobs respectively. (See “Tips:” below.)
You must add at least one Blob seed and one No Blob seed.
Between two and five seeds are often enough to create a map that will identify most
of your blemished fruit.
The image below displays a completed blob map. Notice that the blemished areas,
and the stem and calyx, are displayed in black, while the clean area of the produce is
displayed in light blue.
Tips:
• When clicking blob and no blob points, watch the t-values (tR, tG, tB and tIr) in the
status bar. Identify an area as a Blob only if at least one of the values is larger
than 15. Identify an area as No blob only if all the values are smaller than 10. If
you need to break these rules, you probably need to adjust the settings on the
Good Skin tab.
• If your processed fruit image has entirely black fruit, then you have not created a
No Blob seed.
• For some produce types, it may not be possible to map areas that are a very
different color, but are not critical defects, as No blob areas (e.g. very strong
stripe on gala apples). If this is the case for your produce, see “Defect Colors”
(Page 176) in “Set up your Grade Map for Blemish Grading” in this Section.
4. If your Blemish grader is equipped with infrared cameras (7000CIR and 9000CIR
models), you will need to repeat this process to identify blobs in the infrared images
of the produce.
Click on the button at the top of the Color Map window to display the
infrared images.
Repeat the process of adding Blob and No blob seeds as in step 3 above.
The image below shows a completed Infrared Blob map. As with the Color Blob
map, the stem, caylx and any blemishes should be shown in black, while clean areas
are shown in light blue.
Note: The t-values for IR images are slightly different than those for color images. tIR
values larger then 10 are safe to identify as a blob, tIR values smaller then 4 are safe
to identify as ‘no blob’.
5. Once you have achieved the desired result, click Apply Changes and go to
“Mapping on the ‘Blob Colors’ tab”.
In most situations, you will not need many Defect Colors. More advanced users of the
InVision system often only use two Defects Colors (light and dark), one IR Defect, and
possibly an Ignore Defect Color. You should try and keep your map as simple as
possible by adding as few defect colors as possible. This provides the most accurate and
repeatable results.
For details on when you might wish to use more than one Defect Color, and how to add
them to your Grade Map, see “Defect Colors” (Page 176) in “Set up your Grade Map
for Blemish Grading” in this Section.
The Blob Colors tab will only become active if you are using more than one Defect Color.
2. Click the Blobs Colors tab in the Color Maps window. This tab is only enabled once
you load a captured fruit image and have more than one Defect Color characteristic in
your grade map.
The Fruit and Conveyor cursor buttons are now replaced by the Blob and No Blob
buttons. Only the Blob button is active.
The captured images are shown in the top half of the window, and the processed
images in the bottom half.
3. Mapping Blob Colors is very similar to mapping Fruit Colors. Click on the color that
you wish to map in the Grade Map, and then use the Blob cursor to select areas of
blobs that you wish to map to that Defect Color. You can only click in areas that have
been identified as blobs. Each click creates a Blob Color seed.
After each click you can click the Learn button to see what effect it had on your Blob
Color map.
The image below displays a completed Blob Color map. Notice that the blobs are now
colored with their respective Defect Colors.
Tips:
• As with Fruit Color mapping, you can click the Highlight button on the right of the
screen to highlight areas that have been mapped to the selected Blob Color.
• It is not necessary to ensure every pixel in a blob is assigned to the color you wish
that blob to be. Blobs will be identified as the dominant color within that blob, so
as long as at most of the blob is mapped to the correct color, it will be identified
correctly.
• Try to map Blob colors on the image where the blob you are interested in appears
in the centre of the produce.
4. If your Blemish Grader is equipped with infrared cameras (7000CIR and 9000CIR
models), Blob Colors will need to be assigned to infrared blobs on the produce.
Add at least one extra Defect Color for your IR defects. You may wish to add more
than one IR defect color depending on your grading requirements.
Click on the button at the top of the color map window to display the
infrared images of the produce.
Repeat the process of adding Blob Color seeds as in step 3 above.
The image below shows a completed infrared Blob Color map.
Tip:
If you have a Blob Color where you have only added seeds from the Infrared tab,
blobs that are visible in infrared images will always be assigned to that Blob Color.
5. Once you have achieved the desired result, click Apply Changes. You have finished
the required color mapping to set up Blemish Grading. Go to “Set the Blemish
Grading Parameters for your Variety”.
Once you have set up your Color Map for blemish grading, you need to set the Blemish
Grading Parameters for your variety.
Note: If there is no “type + blemish” option for your produce type, it is still
possible to set up Blemish Grading. Use the type that best matches your produce,
and spend some time testing and editing the blemish grading parameters.
See “Blemish Grading Parameters tab options” (Page 64) in “Variety and
Offline Screens” in Section 3 for a detailed explanation of all these parameters.
2. Capture or load images of your sample produce. You should work with a selection
of produce that is both blemished and clean.
4. You now need to adjust the Blemish Grading Parameters so that the stem, calyx,
and each blob are only identified once.
In the Green apple example below, the stem was being identified (with a white
outline), but was also being identified as a blemish (with a pink outline). A
decrease in the Similarity Threshold value was required to grade this piece of
produce correctly.
Tips:
• If all the blob grading parameters are correct and you just need to adjust the
Similarity, you could instead use the Adjust Blemish Strictness window to
achieve the same results. See “Adjusting Blemish Grading Strictness
During Grading” (Page 190) in this Section.
• It is sometimes not possible to have all blobs on every piece of produce
identified correctly. For example, if produce is misshapen, rotating poorly or
coming off the carriers, it might be difficult to set parameters to track the blobs
correctly without then missing blobs on more normal produce.
Start by getting the tracking correct on normal produce, and then improve the
tracking on odd pieces of produce.
• To deal with changes to fruit quality, you may need to change the Blemish
Grading Parameters during production. After a change during production,
make sure you sample the quality of produce at the outlet to ensure it is being
graded correctly.
• For a detailed explanation of all the blemish parameter options available and
how they behave, see “Blemish Grading Parameters tab options” (Page 64)
in “Variety and Offline Screens” in Section 3.
5. Once you have achieved the desired result, click Apply Changes. Go to “Set up
your Grade Map for Blemish Grading”.
Once you have prepared your Color Map for Blemish Grading and fine-tuned your
blemish grading parameters, you are ready to construct a Grade Map. There are several
categories you can add to your grade map for Blemish Grading:
• Defect Colors – Most of the time, Defect Colors are the only category you need to
add to your grade map. They allow you to split defects into different colors.
• Total Area of Spots – Allows you to grade on the total area of small blobs of any
color.
• Blob Distribution – Allows you to grade on how densely or sparsely blobs are
grouped on the surface of the produce.
• Stem / Calyx size – Allows you to grade on the size of the blobs identified as stem /
calyx.
• Classified Blobs – If required, Classified Blobs allows you to grade on the size,
shape, color and position of blobs.
• Total Blob Count - Not commonly required. Allows to you grade on total blob count
on a piece of produce.
This Section explains when to use each category, how they behave and how to set them
up.
Defect Colors
Blob This mode allows you to grade by the number of blobs of certain sizes,
Count rather than their total area. It is used if you wish to downgrade produce
that have several small defects that do not add to a significant area.
To switch between grading by Count, Area or Both, change the ‘Grade
Blob Colors by…’ setting in the Blemish Grading Parameters window
(see “Blemish Grading Parameters tab options” (Page 64) in “Variety
and Offline Screens” in Section 3).
Note: When grading by Blob Count, a small change in the number of
pixels detected in a blob can easily move it from a small to a medium, or a
medium to large, blob. Results achieved can be less consistent in this
mode. It is usually best to grade Defect Colors by area. If you have a
specific defect that needs to be graded by count, consider adding it as a
classified blob, and grading that classified blob by count.
2. If you have chosen to grade by Blob Count, you will see the Small, Medium and
Large categories as shown below.
The numbers to the right of these sizes indicate the minimum diameter (in mm) for a
blob to be included in that size range.
In the example above, blobs with a diameter of at least 5mm will count as medium;
blobs with a diameter of at least 10mm will count as large.
3. Now add cut-off points for the Defect Color characteristic. For help in determining
initial cut-off points, see “Guidelines for Grading” (Page 96) in Section 4.
2. In the Characteristics window, select Add total area of spots, and then click Finish.
The number to the right of the Spots characteristic indicates the maximum diameter
(in mm) a blob can be to be considered a Spot. In the example above, any blob
smaller than 7 mm will be considered a Spot. Any blobs below that size will be added
to the Total Area of Spots, regardless of their color.
4. Now add cut-off points for the Spots characteristic. For help in determining initial cut-
off points, see Guidelines for Grading in Section 4.
Blob Distribution
• Max spot density allows you to grade on how closely spots (small blobs) are
grouped in the most blemished part of the produce. This may be used for
grading scale on citrus.
• Average spot density allows you to grade on how closely spots are grouped,
on average, over the whole produce.
• Clean area allows you to grade on how much of the produce is free of blobs.
This is a simple measure of the quality of the whole produce.
• Continuous clean area allows you to grade on the size of the largest clean area
on the produce. This is useful to decide whether the produce can be packed
‘clean side up’.
3. The Blob Distribution characteristics you selected are added to your grade map.
On most produce stem and calyx sizes vary considerably, even in good produce. If you
add this category you need to monitor your grading carefully to ensure you are not
downgrading good produce.
2. Choose whether you wish to add Stem Size, Calyx Size, or both.
Remember, the larger blob of the Stem / Calyx pair will be called the Calyx and the
smaller blob will be called the Stem.
3. The Stem Size and/or Calyx Size characteristics will now be added to your Grade
Map. You can assign cut-off points to them in the same way you would a Defect
Color.
Classified Blobs
If a blob is recognized as a Classified Blob, it will be counted twice in your Grade Map -
once in the Defect Color that it matches, and once in the Classified Blob that it matches.
If a blob matches all the rules for several different classified blobs, it will be counted in
each classification that it matches.
2. Choose which Defect Colors you wish to include in this Classified Blob.
Only blobs that are the colors you select here can be identified with your Classified
Blob. In the example above, only blobs that are Light Defect or Dark Defect can be
identified with your Classified Blob.
3. Now choose the shape, size and color properties that a blob must match to be
identified as your Classified Blob. These are called Classification Rules.
For a detailed description of what the Classification Rules mean and how they apply,
see “Blob Classification Rules” below.
4. The Classified Blob will now be added to your Grade Map. You should change the
name of the Classified Blob to describe what this classification means. Insert cut-off
values for each grade in the same way you would for a Defect Color or Fruit Color.
5. To change your Classification Rules (which were added in Step 3) later on, right click
on your classified blob and choose Classification rules.
Example:
To change the blob colors which can receive this classification (which were added in
Step 2) later on, right click on your classified blob and choose Map colors function.
Rule Description
Area (pixels) Area specifies the minimum and maximum area a blob
must have to match your rules. This is measured in
pixels.
Density (%) Density measures how many pixels within the blob are
defect pixels.
Depth (Grey levels) Depth measures how ‘dark’ a blob is compared to the non-
blob area around it. A higher value indicates the blob is
darker than the area around it.
Elongation (ratio) Elongation measures the ratio between a blobs length and
width. A circle would have an elongation of 1.
Tilt Angle (Degrees) Tilt Angle measures the angle between the blob and a
vertical line through the piece of produce.
Rule Description
Defect Color ‘n’ Every Defect Color will have an entry in the Classification
Rules screen. Specify the percentage of a blob that
needs to be mapped to a particular color for a blob to
match your rules.
IR darkness (Grey This measure is the same as ‘Depth’ – but only measures
levels) depth in IR.
Max IR darkness (Grey This measure is the same as ‘Max Depth’ – but only
levels) measures depth in IR.
Shape factor A different measure of elongation. A low number indicates
a round blob.
Defect Color ‘n’ in other This option will only appear on non pixel-matched InVision
view 9000 CIR machines. It shows the amount of ‘Defect color
n’ in the corresponding blob from the other type of
camera. That is, if this blob appears in the IR view, this
value will show the amount of ‘Defect color n’ in the
corresponding blob in the color view.
If you find you need to use this feature often, you may find
significant benefit in upgrading to a pixel-matched
configuration of InVision. Please contact Compac Sorting
Equipment or your local agent for advice.
1. Set the Add total blob counts option in Edit Variety, Blemish Grading parameters:
2. Click Add Defect Color and select Add total blob counts.
3. In the Grade Grid, total blob values are calculated against the Total blobs
characteristic.
In the example below the piece of fruit has 2 small brown blobs and 1 small green
blob, giving a total of 3 small blobs. Medium and Large blobs are similarly totaled.
Selecting Adjust Blemish Strictness from the Variety menu (or pressing Ctrl+J)
displays the Blemish Strictness window.
Note: This menu item is available from the lower Client access level (whereas editing
Blemish grading parameters is an Advanced Client access function).
This feature allows operators to perform quick adjustments to compensate for difference
in accuracy of blemish tracking between batches, without permanently altering the
Blemish grading parameters (set in the Fruit Variety Information window). The main
reason for changing the strictness would be a shift in the predominant fruit shape.
Using this option, an expert grader (or a Compac Technician) can set the Blemish
grading parameters and then instruct the operator to only adjust the Strictness (or they
can even provide some specific rules - such as: for good shaped fruit batches use +2; for
bad shaped batches use -3.)
The strictness value slider modifies the ‘Similarity Threshold (%)’ value that is set in the
Blemish grading parameters window (via Edit Variety), e.g. 95 in the example below:
For this example, to temporarily adjust the Similarity Threshold to 92; simply move the
strictness slider to -3 and click OK.
Tips:
• If the current batch has nice regular shape, you can increase the strictness.
• When a new batch is coming through with more deformed fruit you can simply
decrease the strictness.
Warnings:
• If you tick ‘Set as new base level’, the similarity threshold setting in the Blemish
grading parameters is permanently changed with this adjustment, allowing you to
adjust again from a new level. Note that if you continue to adjust and tick this option,
you can get your similarity to drift away from the original value, so ticking the option is
not recommended. This tick box is only enabled in Advanced Client access level.
• The adjustment allowed is between -10 to +10. This range is quite wide. Adjustments
larger than + or -5 are not recommended.
Overview
Installation and configuration of the Texture Grading software is a Compac
Technician task.
Setting up texture grading Varieties is complex and requires the skills of an
Advanced Operator and/or a Compac Technician.
Texture Grading is currently useful for identifying puff and crease on oranges,
and botrytis and scale on kiwifruit.
In this Section
Page
About Texture Grading ................................................................................... 193
When to use Texture Grading ................................................................... 193
When NOT to use Texture Grading ........................................................... 193
Limitations .................................................................................................. 193
How to set up cameras to use Texture grading ......................................... 194
About the two texture grading methods – pixel or image .......................... 194
Texture grading for Orange Puff and Crease (by classifying images) ........... 195
Texture grading for Kiwifruit Botrytis (by classifying pixels) ........................... 199
Texture grading for Kiwifruit Scale (by classifying pixels) .............................. 201
To view the texture diagnostics ...................................................................... 204
In some circumstances Texture grading is available on InVision 7000 and 9000 systems.
The option, if available, requires software installation and system configuration by a
Compac technician.
This is an Advanced Operator or Technician task as Texture Grading setup can be
complex and requires knowledge and skill. The parameters specified here depend upon
your produce, your machine configuration and your camera calibration. If you are not
confident following these general guidelines, please consult your local Technician or
Agent for assistance and training.
Limitations
When Texture grading is enabled, the Primary Function Grading option in the Fruit Variety
Information window is disabled:
For a more detailed explanation of functions see “About Primary and Secondary
Functions” (Page 118) in Section 4.
Texture grading for Orange Puff and Crease (by classifying images)
Texture grading for oranges is based on grading each full image as creased or not, and
then grading on the % of images that are detected as creased (with side view images
counted as 1 image per side).
2. Click the Texture grading parameters button to open the Texture grading
parameters window.
3. In Load Default Version, select Default Citrus Presets from the drop-down list.
The Grading Attributes and the Advanced Parameters default to the required
settings.
6. If you have not already done so, create your Categories – Color, Blemish, etc.
and complete your standard Color mapping and Grade Grid set up to achieve the
color and blemish grading you require.
7. In the Grade Grid, add a Texture Category and select Creases and Fruit, and
perhaps Rough skin also.
8. Capture or load your creased orange images and view them in the Color Maps
area.
Texture grading for Orange Puff and Crease (by classifying images),
continued
10. Adjust the Brightness slider at the bottom of the tab so that the good orange
colored parts of the oranges are colored (in the reduced image) and the
blemishes, stems, and green areas are conveyor color.
Note: The Processed Fruit Image displays the areas that can be used in the
corresponding texture color that this image is classified as, while the ones that
cannot be used are displayed in the processed conveyor blue color.
Texture grading for Orange Puff and Crease (by classifying images),
continued
The mechanism behind the learning is different to ordinary color mapping, and
each click will classify an entire image and not just a pixel, but the method for
mapping is the same. You will need at least 3 examples for each Texture
characteristic you use, but it is most likely that around 50 – 100 examples (clicks)
will be needed.
In the screen above, creased oranges are mapped to the light blue Creases
characteristic color.
Texture grading for Orange Puff and Crease (by classifying images),
continued
12. Click and Learn all your Texture characteristics and review your results in the
processed fruit image, and your grading in the Grade Grid, exactly as you do when
Color Mapping.
In the screen above, good oranges are being mapped back to the good Fruit
characteristic.
13. When you have finished Texture mapping, review all your grading results for the
captured images, and refine your grading criteria (i.e. cut-off points) against your
Texture characteristics.
In Kiwifruit Botrytis mode you are classifying pixels, not whole images.
2. Click the Texture grading parameters button to open the Texture grading
parameters window.
3. In Load Default Version, select Kiwifruit Botrytis from the drop-down list.
The Grading Attributes and Advanced Parameters default to the required settings.
6. If you have not already done so, create your Categories – Color, Blemish, Shape,
etc. and complete your standard Color mapping and Grade Grid set up to achieve
the color and blemish grading you require.
7. In the Grade Grid, add a Texture Category and select Fruit and Botrytis (you
may also add Stem for mapping the edges of the fruit to get better accuracy in
botrytis detection).
8. Capture or load your kiwifruit botrytis images and view them in the Color Maps
area.
Warning:
After changing any settings in the Texture Grading Parameters window, you must
always clear all of your loaded captured fruit images and capture or load them
again.
9. On the Texture Color Maps tab, progressively map your good and bad images.
Select the appropriate characteristic for the image (e.g. Botrytis (for Botrytis
images) or Fruit (for good skin images) and then click on the image pixels to map
them. The cursor defaults to the correct cursor type (e.g. No Texture for Fruit, and
Texture for Botrytis).
Note: When mapping the botrytis you need to map the line of transition between
good skin and botrytis, not the actual botrytis.
Click and Learn both Fruit and Botrytis and review your results in the processed
fruit image and your grading in the Grade Grid, as you do when Color Mapping.
10. Review all your grading results for all the captured images, and refine your grading
criteria (i.e. cut-off points) against your Texture characteristics.
In Kiwifruit Scale mode you are classifying pixels, not whole images.
2. Click the Texture grading parameters button to open the Texture grading
parameters window.
3. In Load Default Version, select Kiwifruit Scale from the drop-down list.
The Grading Attributes and Advanced Parameters default to the required settings.
6. If you have not already done so, create your Categories – Color, Blemish, Shape,
etc. and complete your standard Color mapping and Grade Grid set up to achieve
the color and blemish grading you require.
7. In the Grade Grid, add a Texture Category and select Fruit and User.
8. Capture or load your kiwifruit scale images and view them in the Color Maps area.
Warning:
After changing any settings in the Texture Grading Parameters window, you must
always clear all of your loaded captured fruit images and capture or load them
again.
9. On the Texture Color Maps tab, zoom in on an image with scale. Select the User
(Scale) characteristic and click on a scale pixel.
Click Learn.
10. You can expect that a lot of good light skin will also be mapped to Scale (User), as
per the picture following.
Click and Learn more Fruit (good skin) until only the scale is mapped:
Note: This will probably only require one or two User (Scale) seeds, but could
require many (i.e. up to 10 or 20) Fruit seeds.
11. Review all your grading results against your captured images and set your texture
grading cut-off points against your Texture characteristics:
Clicking on an image when Texture is selected pops up a dialog with the Texture
information for the image.
Overview
You can review comprehensive data about the produce that InVision analyzes in order to
monitor, investigate and refine your produce grading.
In this Section
Page
Viewing the System Status Screen ................................................................ 207
Viewing Captured Produce in the Images Screen ......................................... 209
Viewing Live Video ......................................................................................... 228
Viewing Information for Graded Produce (Info Screen) ................................. 230
Viewing Graphs in InVision............................................................................. 232
Working with Alarms ....................................................................................... 233
Viewing Log Files of InVision Data ................................................................. 242
Using the Diagnostics Menu ........................................................................... 243
Printing InVision Data ..................................................................................... 244
Exporting InVision Data .................................................................................. 244
Backing Up or Restoring InVision Data .......................................................... 245
The Status screen is used to monitor how the sorting machine is performing, and how
InVision is grading produce.
The information provided, along with feedback from operators, packers etc. is used to
determine whether or not changes are required to adjust the sorting parameters for the
currently Active Variety being run over the sorter.
2
1
Screen areas
Area Description and Troubleshooting
1 Status information area
The left side of the screen displays text with details about InVision. You can view this
for All Lanes on the sorting machine, or you can click on the tabs at the bottom of the
screen to view the Status for an individual lane.
The text displays the Variety, current conveyor speed, and current rotation speed. It
also summarizes the grading results for the lane(s) you are viewing. The grading
results are based on the grade values you have set up for that Variety.
Troubleshooting
• If a lane shows significantly different percentage for a grade, it may indicate a
problem with the grading on this lane (dirt on windows, camera or light fault, bad
settings of fruit limits). It may also be caused by different produce feeding to this
lane (recycled produce mostly return to the end lane, larger / smaller produce may
tend to fall on one side).
• To export the text as a text file select Export Data… from the InVision menu.
The Images screen displays all the images for each captured piece of produce.
Click on the Images button in the main toolbar, or select the Images item from the View
menu.
Viewing produce in the Images screen vs the “editors” (Variety and Offline
screens)
The editors in the Variety and Offline screens see the captured produce as a “big picture”
and manage individual pixels (points) in this picture. However, the Images screen
recognizes the individual images of the produce and can display specific properties for
these images (e.g. diameters, blobs, etc)
The Images screen can therefore help you better understand how InVision decided to
grade your produce based on the properties it saw.
While the Images screen is used to evaluate your mapping and grading, changes to the
color mapping and grading criteria can only be made in the Variety or Offline variety
editing screens.
The number of fruit lines per piece of produce shown on the Images screen depends
upon your InVision system.
• On InVision 5000 systems, there will be only one row of images per piece. This
corresponds to the single top view that this system has of the produce.
• On InVision 7000 systems there will be a row of images from both top views
(incoming and outgoing), one after the other.
• On InVision 9000 systems, there will be three rows of images, corresponding to left,
top (incoming and outgoing) and right views for each piece of produce.
Further, camera synchronization (if in use) has an impact on the IR view display. (See
below.)
In all modes and for all options, colored lines on the images indicate the data being
displayed. The colors and their meanings are explained in “Using the Images screen
Modes and Buttons or Menus” (Page 212) in this Section.
In any mode, if a problem causes an imaging error condition, then a solid box (in a color
used only for diagnostic purposes) is displayed.
Note that in all modes on this screen you can use the + and – keys to zoom in and out on
the image display area (i.e. make the images smaller or larger).
Tab views
Tabs are located at the bottom of the Images screen.
The tabs allow you to select images from three different sources. Select either:
• Grading captured fruit, to display all the images currently captured or loaded for
your online Variety, as they are displayed in your Color Maps area.
• Offline captured fruit, to display all the images currently captured or loaded for your
Offline variety, as they are displayed in your Color Maps area.
• Engine captured fruit, to display images exactly as InVision captured them when
the sorter was running, based on the color mapping and grading criteria applied at the
time of capture. This tab only displays fruit captured on this computer (in a multi
computer system), while the Grading and Offline captured fruit tabs will also show
fruit captured on slave nodes or manually loaded captures. See Show Fruit Row
option in “Images or Skins Viewing Mode” (Page 214).
Note: Only the buttons appropriate for your system and relevant to your variety
parameters will be available, e.g. on systems with Color and IR synchronized cameras,
the Color/IR button allows you to toggle between the Color view and the IR view of the
images.
Normal or
Reduced Color
Viewing Modes
or
Show Fruit
Images
Display the skin view created for the produce from the processing bands
(the areas used to process the produce colors). This is what you would see
if you peeled the skin from the bands, and flattened it out.
or
Show Skin
In this mode, you can also select the Spacing button to show a clearer view
of what the incoming and outgoing cameras have seen. (See the Spacing
button description in “Size/Shape/Blemish Viewing Mode (and Color
Overlays)” (Page 216) in this Section.)
Show Fruit Menu item only. This option is only available from the Engine captured
Row fruit tab.
Display the images as they were originally captured from the cameras, with
a black background replacing the camera picture background. This option is
mainly used for development or problem diagnosis.
In the Images screen, only one of these modes can be selected at any time.
Select this mode to display full color images from the camera. This is the
same view as the Original Fruit Image in the Variety or Offline Color
Maps area.
or
Full Color
Display the reduced color images for this piece of produce. This is the
same view as the Processed Fruit Image in the Variety or Offline Color
Maps area).
or
Reduce All
Image
Machine Menu item only. This option is only available from the Engine captured
reduced fruit tab.
color Display the processed colors as InVision used them while grading the
produce. This view may be confusing because areas that InVision did not
need to analyse may have unpredictable colors. This option is mainly
used for development purposes.
These viewing modes overlay images with border and line drawings to show the features
that InVision computed for the produce (size, blobs, outline, etc). All of these modes can
be activated at any time. Many options can be accessed from both a button and a right-
click menu item.
Shows or hides the edge overlay displayed around the edge of the produce
images (Image mode only). This shows the border between the produce
and the conveyor. This mode can be used to check the accuracy of color
mapping between produce and conveyor, as well as investigating and
or diagnosing some of the edge imaging issues that InVision encountered (e.g.
Toggle touching or doubled produce, cut edges).
Show
Outline
Shows or hides the overlay display of size diameters on all images (not
available when viewing the Skin mode).
You can select which diameters will be displayed by right clicking on the
image, choosing the Diameter Selection sub menu and unchecking the
or items you wish to hide.
Toggle This allows you to see which diameter measurement is in the correct
Diameters orientation for your produce and to diagnose problems with sizing.
The yellow outline shows the filtered edge after size processing.
Blob situated near stem/calyx (in the white box), and the Blob
Information window
As shown on the blue colored blob above, every blob marker has a:
• center - a cross placed at the center of the blob
• boundary line - a line that encloses the blob area
• blob marker color, to indicate which type of blob it is.
See “Section 6 – Blemish (or Blob) Grading” (Page 162) for additional
information on how the image display relates to the Blemish grading
parameter set up.
Colors and blob types are explained below. See also “Blemish Grading
Parameters tab options” (Page 64) in Section 3 for the setup of features
that relate to some of these colors.
Counted
Color Name Meaning as
Defect?
Magenta Blob A blemish. Yes
Magenta Blob This is the same as Blob above, but with Yes
(restored) additional information as to why it was
initially discounted, but then counted
again.
Dark pink Blob (many A blob from a ‘leopard’ fruit (a fruit with Yes
marks) many spots).
Yellow Too small Under-sized blob (mark) that falls below Yes
the minimum size cut-off set for blobs,
and will be counted as a spot when
grading on spot density. Always counted
in blob area / %
White Stem / Calyx Stem or calyx blob. No
Light Stem / Calyx Unsynchronized CIR systems only. No
grey (from other Identified as a stem or calyx blob
camera) because it was detected as such in the
corresponding view (Color / IR).
Mid grey Stem / Calyx Stem or calyx end of the fruit because No
(classification) the color it belongs to is stem color. (This
feature is now unavailable in the current
version.)
Green Cleared Blob was processed completely on this No
image, but when analyzed in conjunction
with other images, a better view of it was
found elsewhere.
Counted
Color Name Meaning as
Defect?
Dark Cleared as Blob was initially detected as a blemish, No
Green stem but was then rejected as being another
view of the stem.
Controlled by Concave stem tolerance
setting in Fruit Variety Information
window.
Sky blue Cleared Similar to another blob because the No
(slipping) produce may be slipping.
Dark grey Ignored Blob was ignored because it is an ‘ignore No
color’ (e.g. blue blobs are stickers, not
blemish).
Dark teal Unused Too far from band. No
Light blue Bad image Is an invalid image (double / touching). No
Dark blue Near stem Ignored because blob is close to stem or No
calyx.
Violet Isolated Blob ignored because of 'Ignore small No
isolated blobs' setting in Fruit Variety
Information window (e.g. a real mark
should be seen several times as the
produce rotates. A mark seen only once
is probably not a blemish, but an isolated
imaging problem).
Olive Ignored on Blob ignored because of ‘Use top view No
side view only for blemish” setting in Fruit Variety
Information window. (Useful for lemons
and kiwifruit on InVIsion 9000 systems
only.)
Coral Stone fruit Part of a crease on a stone fruit. No
crease
Toggle All When on, displays ALL blobs InVision identified on the images, including
Blobs the blobs that were discounted for various reasons. Use this option to check
that blobs have been accurately processed against the Variety setup.
When off, displays only the blobs that were used for grading.
Toggle Changes the blob color from Magenta, if it has been identified as a
Show Blob Classified Blob (i.e. meets the Classified Blob Category criteria as set up in
Class- the Grade Grid). This enables quick identification of different Classified Blob
ification types (e.g. 1st classified blob type is Black, 2nd blob type is Light Blue, etc).
Left-click on a blob to display its classified blob data.
Toggle Shows blobs that were detected as part of a stone fruit’s normal crease
Stone Fruit (apricots, peaches, nectarines) and were therefore not counted as defects.
Crease This feature is only enabled if Fruit with crease (stone fruit) has been
selected in the Fruit Variety Information window Blemish tab.
Turn Toggle All Blobs on when using this option.
Bump and Trapezoid colors for Shape grading and what they mean
Toggle Display bumps detected (for lemon botrytis grading) on the fruit when a
Bumps in Smoothness Shape category is used (see “Grading by Shape” (Page
Outline 145) in Section 5). This may help in diagnosing smoothness grading.
Move the mouse pointer over the bumps to display the bump details.
then images with crease will have blue outlines; rough skin will have yellow
outlines; and produce with no texture problems will have orange outlines.
Left-click on an image to show its texture data and Texture type:
Shows or hides the band area that is used for creating the skin (not
available when viewing the Skin mode).
or
Toggle
Bands
The dotted line shows a rectangle to indicate the band area that is displayed
in skin mode, while the solid line shows the actual area within the band that
is used for processing.
The band area is the best place to select pixels from when you are color
mapping.
or
Toggle IR
Save The first option allows useful data sets to be saved for a produce image:
• Fruit sequence - save all images selected as a sequence of bmp files
with an attached txt (text) file.
The remaining options are for development use:
• Export diameters - save all diameters for the selected fruit as a txt file.
• Export blobs - save a set of blob information for the selected fruit as a
csv (comma separated values) file.
Graph Right-click the mouse on an image and then select the required Graph
option to display the data for that image graphically.
• Draw Radii Graph - draw a graph of "radius against angle" for the
selected image. Use this graph to check radii filter quality.
• Draw Diameter Graph - draw a graph of all diameters for this piece of
produce against the image diameters. Use this graph to check for optical
distortions.
• Draw Bump Radii Graph – similar to Radii Graph but with information
relating to bump detection. Use this graph to check for botrytis bumps.
To print the graph, select Print from the InVision menu (or Ctrl+P).
To exit this option, click on any button in the Toolbar.
Zoom In Use these options, or the + and – short-cut keys, to zoom in and out on the
Zoom Out images.
Edit Fruit Opens the Fruit Variety Information window for the Variety. This is a
Variety useful shortcut when making changes to parameters to test color mapping
and grading. (If you are in the Offline captured fruit tab, then the Variety
Information window for your Offline variety opens.)
Show this Opens the Variety or Offline screen (depending upon which tab you are in)
Fruit in with the captured fruit opened in the Color Maps area and displayed in the
Grading Grade Grid area. This is a useful shortcut when refining your color mapping
Window and grading after viewing images in the Images screen.
The three default options (Dual, Centers and Reduced) are used to troubleshoot
instances when InVision cannot capture images correctly.
Use the Toolbar buttons or the right-click menu items to change how you are viewing
the Live Video display. (See “Toolbar buttons” below.)
Click on the Lane tabs at the bottom of the screen to view the produce images for an
individual lane.
Use the spacebar on your keyboard to pause and resume the video streaming.
Use the + and – keys on the keyboard or the right-click mouse menu items to Zoom in
and out on the images.
Use the Centers view to check if produce centers were set correctly in the Fruit Limit
screen. The crosses should be approximately in the middle of the produce (or the empty
carriers).
Use the Dual view (use Normal or Reduced mode buttons) for a basic check of color
mapping. If produce is mapped to conveyor or conveyor is mapped to produce you should
be able to see it.
Toolbar buttons
Option Description
Adds or removes an extra display of the normal live video for each
produce row. When the color mode is set to Reduced (see below),
the extra display of the video feed shows how InVision interprets
the images using its Color Map.
Adds or removes an overlay display (pink cross) indicating the
predicted produce centers on the live images.
If the centers are not always at the center of carriers or pieces of
produce, the Fruit Limits need to be adjusted. Centers do not
display when the sorter is stopped.
Example of fruit not centered:
Note: If, in the Dual mode, images display in the Normal view but
not in the Reduced view, then the color map is bad.
Toggles to display the images in either Color or IR. This button is
only available if your system is using Color and IR cameras that
are synchronized.
For a summary of the Info (Information) screen toolbar options and the functions
described here, see Info Screen (Page 72) in Section 3.
You can view the produce grading and processing data for a lane from the Info screen. A
scroll bar provides access to all the lanes tabs and the Captured Fruit and Histogram
tabs.
When you open the Info screen, the grid displays the data that was last selected. The
grid is empty (blank) if no data columns are selected, or if all data columns are cleared by
clicking the Hide All button
You can access Graph views of data from the following areas.
To close a graph, select any button on the toolbar to return to another screen.
InVision automatically opens the correct tab when asked to display a graph. The 3D
graph is currently used to show uniformity calibration. This tab can only show one surface
at a time and you can use ‘n’ and ‘p’ to move to the next or previous graphs.
When problems or system errors are encountered while InVision is grading produce,
alarms are generated and displayed in the InVision Alarms screen. The Alarm button
flashes on the Main Toolbar to provide warning of an error condition.
Alarms can indicate a problem in the InVision software, the cameras, the Sizer software,
or on the sorting machine. Some alarm conditions do not seriously affect InVision’s
grading of produce.
Displaying Alarms
When an event occurs that indicates a problem, InVision triggers an alarm. When at least
one alarm is triggered on at least one Node (PC), the Alarm buttons on both the Master
Node and on the ‘bad’ Node will flash. Some very important alarms will also pop up a
message box in the middle of the computer screen. When this occurs, click the Alarms
button to display the Alarms screen.
By default only alarms that are currently triggered will display. Click Show All to display
all the possible alarm conditions.
For each alarm condition, the screen shows the total number of times the error condition
occurred (the "Count") and the time of the last occurrence (“Last Instance”). Alarms that
need a response are displayed in red.
The Alarm window also gives a percentage value for every alarm (Rate %). This is the
percentage of alarm events out of the number of events that would normally occur. For
example, missing 1 vertical reading every second will give a value of 2% since vertical
reading occur 50 times per second. An alarm is triggered if the alarm event frequency (the
Count) is above the Alarm Frequency cut point setting (the Allowed Rate %).
Responding To Alarms
Alarm conditions displayed in red must be responded to. Alarms can be:
• Acknowledged
This stops the alarm button flashing and changes the red alarm text to black.
You should then investigate why the alarm occurred to prevent it occurring again.
For some alarms, you can increase the allowed rate for the alarm if you are confident
it is not affecting grading performance. Check this with your Compac Technician.
• Cleared
This removes all alarm information from the display.
Clearing alarms will both Acknowledge all pending alarms, and reset the counters
for all alarms shown.
Clearing an alarm does not affect the alarm settings.
Note that turning an alarm off or merely Acknowledging or Clearing the alarm does not
resolve the problem. See the Alarm Types and their Solutions for recommended
actions for each alarm.
Camera sync 0% InVision has detected a camera but 2) Check the lights on the camera.
failure is not receiving any images from it. If the lights are green (for power on)
and orange flashing fast at a
Pops up a message. constant rate (for currently sending
pictures) the camera is working.
If the green light is off, then the
problem is either the power supply to
Pops up a message.
FruitRow images 0% Indicates that one camera of a Check the camera synchronisation
dropped synchronized pair missed a picture hardware and/or the camera
and therefore the image from the connection to the computer.
other camera cannot be used.
Incompatible 0% InVision detected a hardware Contact your Compac Technician.
hardware device (probably a camera) that it
configuration, doesn’t recognize.
please contact
Compac Service
Internal Error 0% An error in the program. Contact your Compac Technician.
IQS offset 3% Potential error between IQS head Check the sensor is operating
calibration or sensor and InVision. The alarm correctly and use the methods
problem may be triggered incorrectly if IQS described in the documentation to
or tapper is configured on the check that the sensor/IQS offset is
machine but not in use. Will also correct.
be triggered when odd fruit are
jumping cups or the tapper is
misfiring.
IQS unit grade 0% InVision received an error Check the IQS system.
error message from IQS
Pops up a message.
Using extra 0% InVision is doing additional You will need to replace the camera
processing for processing to match the color that is causing the problem.
camera matching response from some cameras in This alarm can be turned off to stop
the system. InVision from constantly reporting it
while you wait for the correct camera
replacement.
Contact your Compac Technician.
The InVision database includes log files of InVision processing and operating data. These
can be used for diagnostic purposes if necessary.
There are two ways to view a log file. You can use the InVision menu option, or you can
open it from the InVision\Node<n>\Logs directory using Windows Explorer.
Highlight the required log and click Open to view the log in Notepad.
If required, use the Notepad File menu to print or save a copy of the file.
Function Description
Clear Errors Log Clears the Error details from the Alerts screen. This is a
Technician level function only.
Clear Max Clears minimum and maximum values throughout the InVision
Timers system.
Clear Fruit Clears the details from the Fruit Lane tab of the Information
Information screen.
Running Live Provides menu access to options available in the right-click menu
Video in the Video window.
Fruit Image Provides access to and specifies some functionality for the
Images window.
Update Logging Runs an update for all InVision logs.
Note that the Export function only exports data from the tab currently displayed. For
example, in the Status screen, it will only export data for the Lane tab that you have
selected, not for all Lane tabs.
Data is exported using one of two file types:
• CSV = (Comma Separated Value). Used when exporting grid data, for import into
programs such as Microsoft Excel.
• TXT = (Text). Used for other data types being exported.
Compac’s backup software saves the InVision and Sizer data and settings for your
installation. If you have problems with your installation, you can restore the backup
version.
Note that to create a backup of InVision, the InVision software must be shut down.
When you exit InVision, the system prompts you to back up if your current back up is out
of date.
Backup and Restore procedures are provided in a separate document “Operator
Procedures - Start of Day, Backup/Restore and Trouble-shooting”. If you do not
have this document, please contact your local Compac Technician or Compac Service.
Appendix A – Tutorials
Overview
This Appendix provides practical experience in creating and testing a Variety,
and using Blemish and Texture grading features.
If the sample images we ask you to load are not available on your InVision
system, please contact your Compac Technician or the Compac Help Desk.
In this Appendix
Page
Tutorial 1: Create a Simple Two Color Variety ........................................................ 247
Part 1 - Create a Variety and a Simple Color Map ................................................... 248
Part 2 - Capture Fruit and Set Up the Grade Grid .................................................... 261
Part 3 - Run More Captures and Fine Tune the Grading ......................................... 267
Tutorial 2: Create a More Complex 3 Color Variety (and a Color Combination) .. 273
Part 1 - Review the Grading ..................................................................................... 275
Part 2 - Change the Color Mapping .......................................................................... 278
Part 3 - Change the Grade Grid Cut-off Points ........................................................ 287
Tutorial 3: Grade Apples for Blemish ....................................................................... 296
Part 1 - Set up good Color Mapping for the Variety ................................................. 298
Part 2 - Review the results on more captured images (with blemish) ...................... 301
Part 3 - Try grading on a “Bad” Fruit Color characteristic ........................................ 304
Part 4 - Create a Defect Color to grade on............................................................... 307
Part 5 - Review the Good Skin map and adjust if necessary ................................... 308
Part 6 - Map Blobs and No Blobs on the fruit captures ............................................ 311
Part 7 - Use Images view to check Blob Tracking Parameters ................................ 321
Part 8 - Set Grade Cut-off Point values and check grading results.......................... 325
Part 9 - Add IR color for “really bad” blobs ............................................................... 326
Part 10 - Set IRBad Cut-off Point values to achieve final grading result .................. 330
You may wish to read Section 1 (Page 6) and Section 2 (Page 25) in this User Guide, as
background to completing Part 1.
You could also read "Using Captured Images to Refine Grading" (Page 109) in Section
4, as background to completing Part 2.
Click Offline. (Note that this tutorial shows the Variety screen.) You can have
either the Colors or Grades mode open.
Click New Variety (or from the Variety menu, select New Fruit Variety…) to open
the Fruit Variety window.
3
3
For a complete description of all fields available in this window, see “Fruit Variety
Information Window options” (Page 59) in Section 3.
Click Add Fruit Color. Create a new color is selected by default. Click Finish.
You now have two Fruit Color Characteristics:
Change the names of the Fruit Color Characteristics. (As a general rule, name the
first color as your "good" color, and the last color as your "bad" color. This is not
an InVision requirement, but it does make the Grading Grid and the Fruit Capture
List easier to read.)
• Change Color 1 to Red.
• Change Color 2 to Green.
Tip:
Use left click (and/or the keyboard arrows) to move to the Fruit Color characteristic,
and then just type the new name.
If you have difficulty moving to the color name cell, try clicking in a blank (grey)
screen area and pressing the UP arrow. Then use the LEFT, RIGHT, UP, DOWN
arrows to move around the Grade Grid cells.
Notice that the Fruit Color Characteristics also have a column heading in the Fruit
Capture Grid.
3
Click the Add Grade button to display the Add Grade window.
Add 2 grades after Grade A and click OK.
Example:
Tips:
• You can rename a Grade. Click in the title and type the new name.
• You can delete a Grade. Right-click on the Grade name and select Delete from the
menu.
The Save Changes button (Offline screen) or the Apply Changes button (Variety
screen) flashes to indicate that your changes have not yet been saved.
Click the button to save the settings.
Look at the snapped image. The three apples were selected because they are
good samples of obvious green, some red, and obvious red.
Practise navigating around this screen. With the Zoom button selected, left-click
on the image to zoom in (to see the color pixels) and right-click on the image to
zoom out.
Use the scroll bars to display all camera views of the three apples.
Note: On an InVision 5000 system, the images you capture will only display a "top
view". This image has the additional "side views" seen only on InVision 9000
systems.
In the Grade Grid, click on the Red Fruit Color Characteristic to select it.
Click Learn to display the results in the Processed Fruit Image (bottom half of the
screen). Both the Conveyor color and the first fruit color are learned. You should
see a red apple on a blue background.
Important:
When new to color mapping, always click Learn after you click a color so that you
can see the result of your click. Later on, with experience, you may find you can
click in several areas before you do a Learn to achieve the result you require.
Notice that the Fruit Color Characteristic box in the Grade Grid changes color to
represent the fruit color you have selected, and another color seed is added:
( )
It doesn't matter if your processed fruit image doesn't look exactly like ours. You
can add more color clicks later on if you need to fix the mapping.
Map the Green color (i.e. select the Green characteristic and use the Green
Fruit cursor to click on a good example of the color green). Try to click in the
same area as the example above.
Click Learn.
Look at the mapping on the middle apple. There is too much Green on what is
obviously a good red color. Map another Red color seed in that area.
If you notice any conveyor color that is not correctly mapped, you can map and
Learn it now (or do it later).
When you have finished mapping the conveyor and the two colors, click the Save
Changes or Apply Changes button. (This button flashes when there is unsaved
data.)
Click the Edge button. Check whether the edge outlines clearly define the edge of
the fruit or whether any of the fruit color has been mapped as the conveyor color
(see an example of bad edges above). Zoom In on edges that need correction.
Map more colors in areas where the fruit has not been mapped correctly. (See "Tips
when color mapping" above.)
In our example, more Green color is being added to extend the edge. The blue
conveyor color in the middle of the apple will also need to be remapped as Red.
When all edges are clearly defined, Save Changes or Apply Changes.
What next?
You are ready to capture your snapped fruit samples and set up some initial cut-off point
values in your Grade Grid.
Go to Part 2: Capture Fruit and Set Up the Grade Grid.
Click Grades to display the Grades mode so that you can work in the Grade Grid.
The captured images display in the Fruit Capture Grid. Note that all captures will show
as Grade A, because Grade Cut-off Point values have not yet been set, and fruit are
being graded to the left-most default Grade in the Grade Grid (i.e. Grade A).
Fruit 1
Fruit 3
Note however that your Red and Green percentage values may be very different to ours.
• Fruit 1. Looking at this very red Grade A apple, we decided it had approximately
10% green. In the Fruit Capture List (see above) InVision calculated the
percentage of Green as 10.7%. We were pleased with that result against our initial
color mapping.
• Fruit 2. Looking at this apple, we decided it was approximately one quarter green.
InVision calculated the percentage of Green as 25.8%. We were satisfied with
both the percentage, and the fact that our Grade B apple showed a considerably
higher percentage of Green than the very red Grade A apple.
• Fruit 3. Looking at the apple, we decided it was probably about one third to one
half green. InVision calculated 37.5% Green which was close to our estimation.
We were also satisfied that it was showing more Green than our Grade B apple.
We decided the results were good enough for us to set up some initial Grade Cut-off
Points. If we hadn't been pleased with the results, we may have done some more
color mapping.
Looking at the amount of Green on all three pieces of actual fruit, these are our
estimations of the approximate color percentages we think we should try and achieve:
• 10% Green (i.e. approximately one tenth of the fruit) on Fruit 1
• 25% Green (i.e. approximately one quarter of the fruit) on Fruit 2
• 35% Green (i.e. approximately one third of the fruit) on Fruit 3.
You can try and map the first three fruit to achieve these percentages on your own, or you
can follow the steps we have provided below.
Click on one of the fruit captures to display it in the Color Maps area. Select
Colors mode so that you can view the image. We have displayed Fruit 2.
Consider the percentage of green color present on the actual (physical) apple. We
believe that this apple has less than 25% green. This is the value to try to achieve
in the Grade Grid List for this capture.
Use Zoom in and out and the scroll bars to examine all the images of the apple.
• If you find parts of the conveyor that are mapped to fruit, map them to conveyor
now.
• If you find areas mapped to Green that should be Red (as in the example
above), map some more Red.
Try and use the "top view" (the middle row of images) to click your color seeds
on, as this is the most important part of the image. (Note that you will not see
side views on captures taken on InVision 5000 systems.)
• After each Learn you can check the color percentage results in the Fruit
Capture List (click Grades to display that view, then click Colors to continue
your color mapping).
When you have achieved Green percentages of approximately 10, 25 and 35 (see
the screen below), save your changes.
Because Fruit 1 had the least green, and Fruit 3 had the most green, we knew that
we could set up some cut-off points that would achieve the three Grades we required.
We decided to the set initial cut-off points against our Green Characteristic as:
• Grade A - 0.0 to 12.0
• Grade B - 0.0 to 28.0
Click in a Grade Grid cell and use your keyboard arrow keys to move to each "to"
cell for the Green characteristic.
Type in your cut-off point values (or select values using the spinbox arrows).
Note: There is no need to set values in Grade C, as fruit is graded from Left to
Right across the grade grid, and fruit with over 28% Green will default to the last
grade.
Save or Apply your changes.
What next?
You are ready to run further fruit captures to test and refine your grading.
Go to Part 3: Run More Captures and Fine Tune the Grading.
Capture Images
Part 3 - Run More Captures and Fine Tune the Grading, continued
Estimate Grades
Fruit 4 Fruit 5
We decided that Fruit 4, which was dark red and green, should be a Grade B. We
estimated it had approximately 20 - 30% Green.
We decided that Fruit 5, which was a dull red color, should be Grade B as well. It also
had approximately 20 - 30% green.
We looked at the grading result in the Fruit Capture List. Our result was not
satisfactory.
Part 3 - Run More Captures and Fine Tune the Grading, continued
Fruit 4
Fruit 5
In our example, Fruit 4 achieved the Grading we wanted. It was Grade B, and had
between 20 and 30% Green. We did not need to do any more color mapping
against that Capture.
Fruit 5 was showing over 55% Green. We didn't believe this was correct. This
meant that we needed to adjust our color map.
You will need to look at the results in your Fruit Capture list and decide if Fruit 4 or
Fruit 5 requires more color mapping to achieve between 20 - 30% Green. If your
color mapping is correct, go to "4. Review and fine-tune the Grade Grid
values"(Page 271).
In our example, we clicked on Fruit 5 and selected Colors mode to view the Color
Maps area. We identified areas that were mapped to Green when they should have
been mapped to Red.
Part 3 - Run More Captures and Fine Tune the Grading, continued
In our example we found all the areas, including Edges, which were incorrectly
mapped, and remapped them. We clicked and Learned over 20 more Red color
seeds. When the color mapping looked correct on Fruit 5, the Green percentage
was now 31.4% (see picture below).
You will need to click and Learn until the Green mapped on the Processed Fruit
Image is similar to the Green you can see on the Original Fruit Image and you
achieve a similar result to us.
Tip:
Switch between Colors mode and Grades mode when you want to view the entire
Fruit Capture List.
In our example, because we had changed the color mapping, we checked that all
the captures still had Green percentages that supported our original visual
assessment for the amount of Green allowed in our grades, i.e.
• Fruit 1: 10% Green - (Grade A)
• Fruit 2: 25% Green - (Grade B)
• Fruit 3: 35% Green - (Grade C)
• Fruits 4 and 5: 20 - 30% Green - (Grade B)
Values on the earlier captures had changed, but they were still close to our Green
percentage ranges.
While all the colors on the fruit were then mapped correctly, Fruit 5 still had the
wrong grade. We went to "4. Review and fine tune the Grade Grid Values".
You will need to review your results and decide if your grade grid cut-off points also
need adjustment.
Part 3 - Run More Captures and Fine Tune the Grading, continued
You will need to look at the Green percentage values you have achieved on the fruit
captures.
Based on the values achieved in your Fruit Capture List, decide the cut-off points
that you will need to set to grade Fruit 5 as Grade B without affecting the other
grades.
You will need to click in a Grade Grid cell and use your keyboard arrow keys to
move to each "to" cell for the Green characteristic(s) that needs changing.
Type in your new cut-off point values (or select values using the spinbox arrows).
Part 3 - Run More Captures and Fine Tune the Grading, continued
We clicked Regrade Fruit on the Fruit Capture Grid toolbar and were happy with
the new grades achieved in the Grade Grid List.
You will need to click Regrade Fruit (or Save changes) and review your results.
You may need to make further changes to your cut-off points if you haven't
achieved the grading result you expected.
When you are happy with the grading, Save your changes.
Next steps:
In a live packhouse environment, you would usually perform more testing on a
larger number of sample fruit, or on actual batches. You might monitor the sorting
at the outlets, or run more captures and view the results in the Fruit Capture List.
The color maps and grade cut-off points may still require further adjustment to
achieve consistent grading over a large number of fruit with variable colors.
What next?
This tutorial created a very simple color map and grade grid.
To learn more, go to Tutorial 2: Create a More Complex 3 Color Variety (and a Color
Combination).
You will be shown two ways of doing this - using the Green color, or creating a
Combination color.
If your Fruit Capture List grading and percentages were similar to ours at the end of
Tutorial 1, you can continue using your own Variety and adapt our steps to achieve the
required results.
If your color mapping, grades and color percentages were very different to ours, or you
have difficulty using your own Variety, then load and use our Tutorial Variety.
• Click Finish.
• To load the captures in the order of capture, click on the last capture, hold down the
Shift key and click on the first capture. Click Open.
We reviewed the fruit captures and the grading results for Fruits 4 and 5.
First we looked at the Fruit 4 capture:
Both these fruit were Grade B and had similar amounts of Red and Green, but they were
very different in appearance. Fruit 4 had lots of dark red color whereas Fruit 5 had lots of
light red color.
We decided that Fruit 4 should be a Grade A apple and Fruit 5 should remain as a Grade
B.
In the Offline screen, create a new color characteristic. (Click Add Fruit Color and
follow the prompts.)
Rename:
• Color 3 to "Light Red"
• "Red" to "Dark Red".
You will need to remove the original red color seeds so that you can clearly define
the new "dark red" and "light red" colors. This is because we currently have all the
dark red and light red colors mapped to a single "Red" color, and we need to be
able to separate them.
Right click on the Dark Red characteristic and select Clear. (Note: This would
also remove characteristic cut-off points values if they had been set.)
In Colors mode, click on Fruit 5 to display its capture in the Color Maps area.
Locate an apple in the top view (middle row).
Click the Light Red characteristic. Click on a good example of light red in the
middle of the image, and click Learn.
Look at the result. Does your Processed Fruit Image look like ours below?
Look at your result in the Fruit Capture List. Is your percentage result similar to
this?
Tip:
You can also view the result in the Grade Grid area:
To map your Dark Red color, click Fruit 4 to display its capture in the Color Maps
area.
Click the Dark Red characteristic. Click on a good example of dark red in the
middle of an image, and click Learn.
Look at the result of your mapping. Turn on Edges. Does your image look similar to
ours below?
While we had this capture loaded, we looked for other obvious errors. We mapped
more Dark Red into the Green areas:
We mapped the edge of the apple that was incorrectly mapped to conveyor:
Look at the percentage results in your Fruit Capture list against our original color
estimations.
Are the percentages you achieved within the estimated ranges we expected?
Estimations:
Capture Dark Red Green Light Red
Fruit 1 30% 10% 60%
Fruit 2 10 - 15% 25 - 30% 55 - 65%
Fruit 3 20% 35% 45%
Fruit 4 50 - 60% 25% 15 - 25%
Fruit 5 0% 30% 70%
Our mapping results showed that that all our Green values were too high, and many
fruit had insufficient Dark Red color mapped.
Your results may be similar, or you may have too much or too little Green or Light
Red.
The actual percentages achieved against the mapping are still only an indication of
whether the mapping "seems" correct or not and more checking is required.
Load the color map for the capture that seems to have the "worst" results when
compared to the estimations. Closely review the color mapping on all images and
correct the mapping as necessary, using our steps as a guide.
If you have imported our Tutorial Variety, then you can follow our steps exactly.
We loaded Fruit 1. It was obvious there was Dark Red color in the Original Fruit
Image that was still mapped as Light Red. There was Green that should be Light
Red. We looked closely at the Original Image and mapped until the Process Fruit
Image looked correct.
Tips:
• Always click in the middle of an area that is 'wrong'.
• When trying to shift the boundary of a color, sometimes it’s worth clicking on the
"good" side of the boundary (instead of the "bad" side of the boundary) as that
will make the boundary move.
• If you don't like the result of a click and Learn, you can click Undo and then
Learn, and try again.
• To clearly distinguish between colors in the Processed Fruit Image, try clicking
the Highlights button on the Color Maps toolbar. The mapping for the currently
selected color characteristic is shown in bright pink. Click on a different color
characteristic to highlight its color mapped areas.
Click Highlights again to turn highlighting off.
We reviewed all the images for Fruit 1 and found nothing else that required further
mapping. Red areas in the Original Fruit Image were clearly identified in the
Processed Fruit Image. The color percentages we achieved were within our
estimations.
Notice that fixing the color mapping for Fruit 1 had changed (and improved) the color
percentages on the other fruit captures as well. We were closer to our original
estimations.
Estimations:
Capture Dark Red Green Light Red
Fruit 1 30% 10% 60%
Fruit 2 10 - 15% 25 - 30% 55 - 65%
Fruit 3 20% 35% 45%
Fruit 4 50 - 60% 25% 15 - 25%
Fruit 5 0% 30% 70%
We reviewed all the images for Fruit 2 and added more Dark Red. The
percentages were now within the ranges we had estimated.
We reviewed all the images for Fruit 3. We knew that our percentage estimations
were not reflected in the Fruit Capture List for this fruit. This fruit was:
• Estimated: Dark Red: 20%; Green 35%; Light Red 50%
• Currently: Dark Red: 19%; Green 39%; Light Red 41%.
We looked closely at our images, using Zoom in and out to find areas of Green that
should be mapped to either Dark Red or Light Red.
The mapping slightly extended the Light Red areas, and we achieved Dark Red 19%;
Green 36%; Light Red 45%.
We couldn't find any more Dark Red that should be mapped.
We looked at how the percentages had changed on the other fruit in the Fruit Capture
List as a result of our mapping. They were still within our estimations.
We reviewed all the images for Fruit 4 and found nothing else that required further
mapping. The percentages were close to the ranges we estimated.
Is your Fruit Capture List similar to ours? Are your Grades still A, B, C, B, B?
If not, see "To use our Tutorial Variety" (Page 287) in Part 3, “1. Review your
results”.
This part of the tutorial demonstrates two ways the Grade Grid percentage values can be
applied to Fruit Color characteristics to achieve exactly the same result.
Prior to editing the Grade Grid, a copy of the Variety is made to work in so that we can
retain our original color map and grading cut-off points. In the new Variety, we will grade
on "Green" and "Dark Red".
We can then reload the original Variety and practice grading on the more complex
Combination color.
If your Fruit Capture List results (and your color mapping) are not very similar to ours,
then follow the steps below to load our Tutorial Variety.
• Click Finish.
3. Grade using the "Bad" Green Color and a "Good" Dark Red color
Even if you have loaded our Tutorial Variety, before you begin, make a copy of the
Variety to work in.
Click New Variety. Select "Create a new fruit variety based on an existing one"
and then click Next.
Select your Variety (or the Tutorial Variety), and click Next.
Type a new name for your Variety and click Finish. The copied Variety is selected
in the Offline window.
We reviewed the grading result for Fruit 4. We wanted this fruit to be Grade A.
The number colored red (25.1%) showed us that this was the percentage value that
determined the grade.
The Green cut-off point would have to be set to over 25.1% in the A. Grade to
achieve Grade A for this fruit.
You need to decide the A Grade cut-off point value you will set to regrade this fruit
as Grade A.
We set the A Grade cut-off point to 0.0 to 30.0. We left the B Grade cut-off point as
0.0 to 35.0.
We changed the Dark Red cut-off point to 25 to 100 and achieved the result we
wanted:
Change your Dark Red cut-off point and click Regrade Fruit.
Save your changes.
We wanted to shift our grading from grading on Green to grading on "total Red".
We looked at the maximum "bad" Green currently allowed in Grade A, and "inverted"
the values for the "good" Dark Red + Light Red combination color.
For example:
• on a Grade A fruit, we had allowed up to 12% Green color.
The "inverse" of 0 - 12% (allowable bad color) is 88 - 100% (required good color)
(i.e. 12+88=100).
• on a Grade B fruit, we had allowed up to 35% Green color.
The "inverse" of 0 - 35% (allowable bad color) is 65 - 100% (required good color)
(i.e. 35+65=100).
You will need to change your Combination color cut-off points to be the "inverse" of your
current Green color cut-off points.
If you are using the Tutorial Variety, set 88 to 100, and 65 to 100:
We cleared the Green cut-off values and regraded. The results in the Fruit Capture
List stayed the same.
This was because "inverting" the cut-off point values only meant that we were now
grading on Dark Red + Light Red colors instead of the Green, so there was no
change to the grading.
You will need to remove both your Green cut-off point values. To do this:
• Click in the Green Grade A cut-off point grid cell to select it.
• Right-click your mouse and select Clear from the drop down menu.
• In the Clear item? pop-up, click Yes. Because you have selected a grade grid
cell, this removes the cut-off point values (but not the characteristic's color
seeds).
• Repeat the step to remove the Green Grade B cut-off point.
• Click Regrade and review the result. It should be unchanged.
With the Fruit 4 capture loaded, we reviewed its grading result in the Grade Grid.
We wanted this fruit to be Grade A.
This fruit had a combined red of 72.8%. To change the grading result, we lowered the
Grade A cut-off points from 88 to 100, to 70 to 100:
(Note that this is the same step we performed previously when grading on "Bad" Green and
"Good" Dark Red. In that step, we had to increase the Green cut-off point in Grade A from
12 to 30. Now, grading on the "good combined" colors, we need to lower the value to the
"inverse" of 30, i.e. 70).
While we had achieved Grade A on Fruit 4, Fruit 2 had also changed from Grade B to
Grade A. Now we needed to set a Dark Red cut-off point value that would regrade Fruit 2
back to Grade B.
We set the Dark Red Grade A cut-off point value to 25 to 100% so that only fruit with
greater than 25% Dark Red could achieve Grade A:
When we regraded, we had achieved the result we wanted:
You will need to follow the steps we went through, and review and change your cut-off
point values for both your Dark Red + Light Red color, and your Dark Red color.
If you are using our Tutorial Variety, you can set the same values that we did.
When you achieve our grading result, the tutorial is completed. Save your changes.
This Tutorial introduces Blemish Grading. It explains the parameter settings and InVision
features required to map blobs and grade blemished produce using sample images of
Gala apples.
Note that the tutorial can only be fully completed if your InVision system is configured to
use synchronized cameras. To check if your system is synchronized look at the title bar
at the top of the InVision screen. A synchronized system displays ‘(Pixel matched)’ (see
below).
If your system is not synchronized or is color only, you should be able to follow the tutorial
steps using color images only, and be able to complete most (but not all) of it.
Before continuing, you may wish to read Section 6 – Blemish or Blob Grading (Page
162), as background to completing the tutorial. The screens, windows and screen fields
used are also described in “Blemish Grading Parameters tab options” (Page 64) in
“Variety and Offline Screens” in Section 3.
In this Tutorial
Please read "Before you start Tutorial 3" before completing the following 10 tutorial
stages.
Part 1 – Set up good Color Mapping for the Variety
Part 2 – Review the results on more captured images (with blemish)
Part 3 – Try grading on a “Bad” Fruit Color characteristic
Part 4 – Create a Defect Color to grade on
Part 5 – Review the Good Skin map and adjust if necessary
Part 6 – Map Blobs and No Blobs on the fruit captures
Part 7 – Use Images view to check Blob Tracking parameters
Part 8 – Set Grade Cut-off Point values and check grading results
Part 9 – Add IR color for “really bad” blobs
Part 10 – Set IRBad Cut-off Point values to achieve final grading result
Blemish grading still requires a good color map to be set up, so that “good” (and perhaps
‘bad’) fruit colors are identified for grading purposes. Once color grading achieves
reasonable results, Defect characteristics (which can be difficult to identify using color
grading alone) are added as grading criteria.
We have set up a Tutorial Variety with a Fruit Color Map and a Grade Grid, using sample
captures of good (non-blemish) Gala apples. While you will use our Variety to start the
tutorial, you would normally capture your own images, and build your own color map.
On Unsynchronized systems ONLY:
After importing our Variety, you will have no seeds displaying in the Grading Status Bar at
the bottom of the screen. Before starting this tutorial, you will need to perform basic color
mapping to map the Red and Green fruit colors.
• Click Finish.
2. Load our captured image of a good fruit that we have already color mapped.
In Grades mode:
• Click on the Load Fruit button on the Fruit Capture Grid toolbar.
3. In Colors mode, view the Fruit Color mapping (in the Color Maps area) and the grading
results in the Grade Grid.
This fruit is approximately 94% Red, with 6% Green. It is achieving Grade A because our
Grade Grid cut-off point requires less than 25% Green in a Grade A apple.
Note that some of the Variety default values will be changed as the tutorial
progresses. (With experience, you will be able to start your blemish mapping with
settings more appropriate to the type and quality of produce you are grading.)
3. Change the name of the Variety to a unique name, such as Apple Blem <Your
Name> (e.g. Apple Blem John).
At this point in blemish mapping, you would normally review your sample produce (and
their images) against their current color mapping grades and decide the grading you
wish to achieve.
4. Open the Images view, and scroll down through our images. Do you agree with our
grading assessment below?
We think that:
• BadBlemish1 and BadBlemish2 should be Grade D (Reject):
BadBlemish1
BadBlemish2
(You will notice that the blemish on BadBlemish2 is much easier to see in the IR
image):
BadBlemish2 (IR)
Clean1
Clean2
Clean4
Clean3
CosmeticDefect1
CosmeticDefect2
CosmeticDefect3
For the purpose of this tutorial, we will try to map a “bad” fruit color to grade on.
Note: This step is only to demonstrate why normal color mapping will not produce the
result we want, and why we need to use the special Blemish Grading option instead.
Important:
Do NOT Apply your changes during this stage of the tutorial. We will need to Discard all
changes at the end.
1. In Grades mode, add another Fruit Color characteristic and rename it Bad.
2. Change the Mode from % to Area. This will achieve higher counts for the small
blemishes. (You could also use the per 10k Mode to increase the counts.)
3. In Colors mode, click BadBlemish1 in the Fruit Capture List to display the capture
in the Color Maps area.
(If the Infrared view is displaying, turn it off by clicking the Infrared button.)
4. In the Fruit Colors tab, map the blemish color to the Bad color characteristic. You
should be able to do this with just one click and a Learn.
6. Look at the results in the Fruit Capture List. With our mapping, this fruit is showing
74.3 “Bad” color. (Your result may be slightly different, depending on where you
clicked on the blemish.)
Looking closely at the images, trying to map a Bad color has also mapped “Bad”
areas on the Clean captures (e.g. Clean2 and Clean4 show more bad color than
BadBlemish1).
This is because stem and calyx (and some of the darker red areas) are also
mapping as “bad” dark areas on our other fruit images.
CosmeticDefect1
There is not enough difference between the actual “Bad” on BadBlemish1, and the
“Bad” being identified on the other fruit, to enable us to set up grade grid cut-off
point values to grade on.
8. Important:
Discard your changes. This will remove the Bad characteristic and discard all of
your color mapping changes.
Note:
While you might be able to map the black defect on the image BadBlemish1 with only a
limited amount of the stem also being mapped to “Bad”, the stem and calyx frequently
have colors that are very similar to blemishes. Using “bad” colors therefore generally
results in many good fruit being detected as bad.
This technique is very useful however when dealing with defects that have a very
distinctive color; for example stem pulls on oranges or bird droppings on kiwifruit (which
are both colored white), or green on potatoes.
Having discarded your changes from Part 3, now follow our steps to set up Defect Color
mapping.
1. Return to Variety mode, and create a Defect Color characteristic called Bad:
• In Grades mode, click Add Category.
• Select “Defect color – undesirable marks”
• Click Finish.
2. In the Grade Grid, rename the Defect Color to “Bad”, and Apply Changes.
Notice that the default Defect mode is Area (not percentage). This is because
grading standards usually specify the allowed area of defects (i.e. not a percentage
relative to fruit size). Also blob percentages are usually too small to grade on.
You can change the Mode to % or per 10k (which is similar to % but with counts
100 times bigger to display more usable numbers) if that suits your standards
better.
Note: The Good Skin tab is not available for selection until after you have added a
Defect Color characteristic.
The Good Skin map usually only requires some contrast adjustment to ensure that the
defect areas on fruit (blobs) are clearly visible and dark against the good skin.
In this stage of the tutorial we set the Good Skin settings to values that we know are
appropriate for the fruit type and images captured.
2. Set the Brightness to 100 and the mode to Negative. These are the best settings
for Blob mapping.
Tip:
Adjust the slider settings by clicking and holding the mouse on the slider. Drag the
slider until the processed fruit image and the value both change. Do not release the
mouse until the desired result is achieved.
Part 5 - Review the Good Skin map and adjust if necessary, continued
3. The aim of Good Skin mapping is to adjust the Contrast so that the lower picture is
a uniform grey (eliminating the apple stripe pattern) and the marks on the apple
(blemishes and stem/calyx) are darker.
Using our examples below, change your Contrast settings to the same values as
ours, and notice the effect on the grey coloring.
Example 1 - Contrast set to 100:
The green parts are too dark; the Defect is too light.
Part 5 - Review the Good Skin map and adjust if necessary, continued
While the Defect is dark (which is good), the stripes are too dark.
This achieves the best Contrast result on this image. The Defect is clearly defined,
and the stripes have disappeared. This is the contrast we should use.
Blob mapping identifies marks (bad marks or sometimes good marks) on the produce.
The goal is to have all blemishes, as well as stem and calyx, clearly marked as blobs, and
good skin areas showing no blobs at all.
1. Click on the Blobs tab. BadBlemish1 should be displayed in color (i.e. Infrared
should be turned off).
Note: The Blobs tab is not available for selection until after a Defect Color
characteristic has been added.
2. Click the Blob button in the toolbar. (The Info button becomes available.)
Click the drop down menu button beside the Info button, and choose “Selected Color
with Details” (if it is not already selected).
This will show the T values (e.g. tR, tG, tB) against the Blob and No Blob cursor while
you are blob mapping:
T values measure the difference in color between the pixel you are viewing and the
surrounding area. If the difference is very small, then InVision will determine that the
pixel is probably NOT part of a mark on the fruit.
Tips:
• When clicking “Blob”, look at the T values and make sure at least one of them is
bigger than 15 or smaller than -15.
• When clicking “No Blob”, look at the T values and make sure all of them are closer to
0 than 10.
• When you just start mapping, use the obvious places with T values in the 30’s for
“Blob” and within ±3 (plus or minus 3) for “No Blob”.
Important:
It is generally best to click in the middle of images where the point you are clicking on is
far from the edge. Also, a click in some areas may not work for various reasons. When
the area you are pointing to is not good for clicking, the mouse cursor changes.
If you click when the cursor looks like this , then the click is ignored. It may help you
map if you note the current number of seeds in the status bar, and check that the number
increases each time you click.
2. Now click the No Blob button and move your cursor over an area of good skin.
Notice the number of color blob seeds displayed in the information bar at the bottom
of the screen has increased to 2.
3. Notice both the defected areas, and the stem and calyx, have been identified as
blobs. If your result is similar to ours, we are ready to proceed to the next step. If
you have a significantly different result to ours, try to undo your blob seeds by
clicking on the undo button, then try mapping again until you get a similar result to
ours.
Depending on where you clicked, your result may look different to ours. There may
be images with no blobs or images with more blobs.
5. Apply Changes, and look at your Blob mapping in the Images view:
• Click Images, and select Blobs.
• Right click your mouse and turn Toggle All Blobs On, by selecting it from the
menu. This displays additional multi-colored markers on the images. (See
“More about the Toggle All Blobs mode” below.)
• Scroll down until CosmeticDefect3 is showing.
• Blobs with a pink outline are areas InVision has identified as a blemish. Blobs
with a white outline have been identified as a stem or calyx. (At this point
however our focus is on ensuring that all marks are detected, including stem
and calyx. It doesn’t matter if stem and calyx are not correctly identified.)
• Check the blob mapping on all our sample fruit. You should find an incorrectly
identified stem on Clean3:
• Our next step is to return to the Blobs tab and find and fix all the obvious
mapping problems.
• Click Variety and return to Grades view.
Stem and calyx were mapped, but the stem was also being identified as a blemish
(pink color). This is a problem with the blob tracking (that is, the blobs are being
mapped correctly but are assigned to the wrong category), so we will fix that later.
2. What you do
Review our steps below, then look at all your captured images in the Blobs tab and
identify and fix any similar problems in your own mapping.
You may find some, or all, of the problems we encountered. What you will see will
depend on exactly where you have clicked. You might have blob areas defined on
different captures to us (e.g. Clean4 may also show a Bad area). This is not
necessarily “wrong”, and your mapping can be refined as you progress through the
tutorial.
3. What we did
We looked at each fruit image individually, adding Blobs or No Blobs as required to
more accurately reflect how the fruit actually appears.
We looked first at BadBlemish1.
In Grades mode, we clicked on BadBlemish1 in the Fruit Capture List.
In Colors mode, we viewed it in the Blobs tab. The processed fruit image showed
very little stem mapped.
It is often hard to view all of the stem as a single blob, but it is important to map it as
well as possible.
We mapped more Blob to correct it. (Remember that you can use Zoom mode to
increase and decrease your pixel size.)
It took several clicks (and some Undo’s) and Learns to define the stem.
4. BadBlemish1 was now showing a lot of Clean areas as blob, so we mapped more No
Blob areas to fix this:
This was the result of our Learn. You can see that the stem bowl is not always totally
connected to the top of the stem, but this is the best result possible:
5. Checking through the rest of our images in the ‘blobs’ tab of the variety screen, we see
that Clean1 also have an area of the stem that is not mapped as ‘blob’. We correct
this by mapping some more of the stem as Blob.
6. We checked the blob mapping of the rest of our sample fruit in the Colors tab.
We mapped some blobs on all the Clean fruit to No Blob.
We checked again.
We mapped further stem on some of the other images to make our stem mapping as
accurate as possible, without mapping good skin as blobs.
Our images now had their stem, calyx and blobs mapped as Blob and the rest of the
fruit mapped as No Blob.
7. What you do
Review your images and try to refine your blob mapping. If a click and Learn not does
color the area you require, remember to Undo and Learn again. Look for blobs that
are not clearly defined – (i.e. blemishes, stems and calyxes) and map more Blob.
Look for blobs showing on good skin, and map more No Blob.
When you have finished (or if you cannot achieve a result you are happy with) go to 4.
Review your results.
• Click Finish.
• Select Edit Variety and change the name to something unique (e.g. Apple Blem
John1).
With good mapping achieved between Blob and No Blob, we now needed to make sure
we could identify the stem and calyx correctly so they would not be counted as defects.
This check is done in the Images view. As you will see in that view, most marks on the
fruit are seen multiple times by the system. We would like to count each mark exactly one
time to get the correct blemish measure for the fruit. The process of finding this “one”
correct view for each defect is called “Blob Tracking”.
What you do
1. Apply your changes, and open the Images view.
2. Look at BadBlemish1.
Ensure the Blobs button is selected.
Use the right click mouse menu to turn Toggle All Blobs Off and On.
With Toggle All Blobs On, the image looks like this:
With Toggle All Blobs Off, the images look like this:
Both BadBlemish1 and BadBlemish2 images have stem and calyx identified (white
markers), but parts of the stems are also being detected as a blemish (pink markers).
This indicates we need to adjust some blob grading parameters in order to fix the
problem.
The most common things to change in order to improve blob tracking are:
• Similarity threshold. This controls the overall accuracy of tracking. If set too high,
blobs will be counted twice. If set too low, blobs will be missed.
• Concave stem tolerance. This controls the accuracy of tracking close to stem /
calyx. If set too low, stems may be counted twice. If set too high, real marks close to
the stem will be missed.
• Maximum distance blob merge. This controls merging of close marks. If set too
low, stem tips may be detected as defects. If set too high, marks near stem will be
merged with the stem and discarded.
In the example above the image has stem and calyx identified (white markers), but the
calyx is also being detected as a blemish (pink marker).
If this occurs, the Concave Stem tracking parameter margins needed to be increased
(e.g. change them from 0 to 10).
Max distance blobs merge (Pixels) change requirements can display like this:
3. To increase the blobs merge distance, right click on an image and select Edit fruit
variety from the menu.
Now select Blemish grading parameters and change the Max distance blobs merge
(Pixels) from 5 to 8.
Notice that BadBlemish1 and BadBlemish2 are now identifying the stem and calyx
correctly.
Part 8 - Set Grade Cut-off Point values and check grading results
Our blob mapping results were then good enough to set some initial grades cut-off points
against the “Bad” Defect characteristic.
2. If your Bad count values are similar to ours, set your Defect cut-off points to these
values:
• Grade A and B: 0 to 5
• Grade C: 0 to 100
Tip:
Use linking to set your Grade A and B values. To link grade grid cells, hold down
the Ctrl key and click once Grade A, and then again in Grade B. The grades are
selected for linking when the cells are grey. Release Ctrl and respond Yes to the
linking question. The cells become pink. Now when you enter a value into one
linked Grade, it is replicated in the other linked Grade(s).
Our next step was to fix the blob mapping and grading for BadBlemish2 using IR.
Note: You will need to skip this Section if your system does not support IR.
The BadBlemish2 defect was similar in color to the good “Red” skin and was therefore
difficult to identify using color Blob mapping.
Because the defect was very obvious in IR, our best solution was to use the much higher
IR blob T values to map it.
Note that bad defects generally tend to be very visible in IR, while cosmetic defects are
not seen at all. The differentiation allows us to use IR defects for rejecting fruit, and color
blob mapping of blemishes for accurately grading fruit in the top grades.
1. Add another Defect Color characteristic and map the blob in the Blobs tab
1. In Grades mode, click Add Defect Color, create another defect color and rename it to
IRBad:
3. Map the Blob color seed. A good place to begin is to use a t-value of -10 or lower (e.g.
-34) for blob, and a t-value of 0 for no-blob.
After Learn:
1. Now that you have two Defect colors, you also need to map the Blob Colors (to
differentiate between the Bad color and the IRBad color) so that you can achieve the
grading results we want.
Open the Blob Colors tab.
Leave Infrared on (i.e. the Infrared view should still be selected).
Important:
Make sure the IRBad defect characteristic is selected (i.e. your cursor must display
“IRBad”. If it doesn’t, click on the IRBad name in the Grade Grid characteristics.)
Click and Learn the IRBad color.
Apply Changes.
3. Your Fruit Capture List should now show IRBad blobs mapped:
4. We can see from the values shown in the captured fruit grid that our IR mapping has
achieved the desired result, that is both BadBlemish fruit showing IR defect color, while all
other fruit are not.
Part 10 - Set IRBad Cut-off Point values to achieve final grading result
Note: You will need to skip this Part if your system does not support IR.
1. With IR blob mapping completed, we are now ready to complete our mapping by setting
cut-off points for the IRBad Defect Color characteristic.
2. Select Grades, and in the Grade Grid, against IRBad, link Grades A, B and C and give
them a value of 0 to 10:
This ensures that all fruit with an IRBad value greater than 10 will be sorted to Bad
Blemish (Reject) grade.
Apply Changes.
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