Machine-vision-based algorithm for blockage recognition of jittering sieve in corn harvester

Jittering sieve is a significant component of corn harvester, and it is used to separate kernels from impurities. The sieves may be blocked by kernels during the separating process, leading to the reduction of working performance. Unfortunately, the automatic recognition of blockage has not been studied yet. To address this issue, in this study we develop machine-vision-based algorithms to divide the jittering sieve into sub-sieves and to recognize kernel blockages. Additionally, we propose the metric to evaluate blocking level of each sub-sieve, aiming to provide the basis for automatic blockage clearing. The performance of the proposed algorithm is verified through simulation experiments on real images. The success ratio of edge determination reaches 100%. The mean cross-correlation coefficient of the blockage levels and the actual numbers of blocked kernels for all test scenes is 0.932. The results demonstrate the proposed algorithm can be used for accurate blockage recognition, and the proposed metric is appropriate for evaluating the blockage level.