New Holland Braud S.a.

Jean-Louis Vigneau

Jean-Paul Marcel Martin

Daniel Henri Le Neve

Nathalie Gorretta

Dominique Clanet

Jean-Francedillaois Bonicel

A method and apparatus for harvesting fruit determines the proportion of fruit in a mixture of products containing fruit and bodies foreign to the fruit by capturing at least one initial image of a surface of the mixture to be examined. The device then assigns to each image pixel of one of two extreme grey levels according to the initial grey level of the pixel relative to a set threshold and then records the number of pixels of at least one extreme grey level to determine a area ratio between areas occupied by fruit and foreign bodies in the image. The invention has particular application to the harvesting of fruit, berries and the like produced on trees or bushes grown in rows to use the calculated proportion of fruit to adapt at least one of the functioning parameters of the machine.

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Lunel, France

Jean-Louis Vigneau