Development of Packaging Equipment for Strawberries (Part 1)

——Test Equipment for Grading and Tray-packing of a Peduncle-grip-type Tray——

Abstract

We devised test equipment for grading and tray-packing of peduncle-grip-type trays, which are used to pack strawberries by gripping the peduncle, to assist in efforts to develop equipment that would reduce grading and packing work. The test equipment grips the peduncle of a strawberry, and grades strawberry size by a small charge-coupled camera device. And then, the strawberries are packed in the target peduncle-grip-type tray in order. The test equipment grades with about 91% accuracy, and about 4% error with±1g. Its success rate of tray-packing is about 95%. It takes about 4.5 seconds to pack a strawberry in the center of a peduncle-grip-type tray which is centrally located.