JP2006177691A - Control system of grain sorter - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide the control system of a grain sorter for which the problem in the conventional techniques has been solved. <P>SOLUTION: The control system for the grain sorter is mainly constituted of a sorter A for continuously detecting the raw material grains O, which flow down to an inspection region in a row, at a high speed in a line state at every grain so as to traverse the flow of grains to sort them, an inspection device B which receives the supply of the raw material grains and a part of the grains sorted by the sorter flowing down to the inspection region in a row to continuously detect and discriminate the supplied grains at a high speed at every grain in a line state so as to traverse the flow of the grains and a control unit C for setting the sorting set value of the sorter on the basis of the discrimination and sorting result of the inspection device so that the discrimination and sorting result of the inspection device becomes a target ideal value. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a control system for a grain sorter such as a color sorter.

  Conventionally, when the defective product mixing ratio of the sorting raw material is changed in the grain color sorter, the sorter is set to an appropriate state by human operation to maintain the sorting accuracy. This is a very troublesome work when handling various raw materials and in continuous operation for a long time. Therefore, there has been a demand for a function of automatically adjusting so as to maintain the accuracy of the sorter to prevent a reduction in sorting accuracy.

  A method for adjusting a sorter in response to such a request is described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 10-216650 (Patent Document 1) and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-24874 (Patent Document 2).

However, these adjustment methods are
1. Since a certain amount of grain sampling is performed at regular time intervals and sampling is not performed continuously, the change in the mixing rate between sampling cannot be measured.
2. When the defective product mixing rate of the raw material changes greatly, it takes a lot of time for the defective product mixing rate of the sorted good products to return to the target value.
3. When the sorter and the discriminating device that measures the mixing rate are different, some discriminators that are judged as defective by the discriminator may not be judged as defective by the sorter. If they are different, the difference is likely to increase.
There was a problem such as.
JP-A-10-216650 Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-24874

  An object of the present invention is to provide a control system for a sorter that solves the above-described problems in the prior art.

  In order to achieve the above object, a control system for a grain sorter according to the present invention continuously runs at a high speed for each grain in a line across the flow of raw grain that flows down in parallel to an inspection area. And a sorter that detects and sorts the raw material grain and a part of the grain selected by the sorter, and is supplied to flow down in parallel to the inspection area, and crosses the flow of the supplied grain Based on the discrimination classification result by the inspection machine that continuously detects and discriminates at high speed for each grain in a line shape, so that the discrimination classification result of the inspection machine becomes the target ideal value The control unit is configured to set the sorting setting value of the sorting machine.

  Both the sorting machine and the inspection machine can optically detect the inspection region at a high speed for each groove in a line shape across the grain flow, and can detect the detection result at a high speed by a high speed determination algorithm. It consists of the same kind of detection devices having the same judgment criteria.

The sorter may be a primary sorter alone or may be composed of a primary sorter and a secondary sorter.
In the inspection machine, raw material grains, selected non-defective grains, and unselected non-defective grains can be put into separate grooves in the chute and continuously flowed.

  With an inspection machine capable of continuous measurement, each inspection sample of raw materials, sorted good products, and poorly sorted products is simultaneously inspected at every moment to obtain uninterrupted data. Since the set value can be fed back every moment, quick and fine selection control is possible.

  Furthermore, since the sorter and the inspection machine are devices of the same measurement method, the inspection standard and the selection standard are matched, and the operation of synchronizing both is relatively simple.

  FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the overall configuration of an embodiment of a grain sorter control system according to the present invention. As shown in FIG. 1, this control system is a computer that performs data communication between the sorting machine A, the testing machine B, and the sorting machine A and the testing machine B, and calculates the obtained data. And a control device C composed of the above. In the embodiment of FIG. 1, the sorter A includes two sorters, a primary sorter D and a secondary sorter E. The sorter A and the inspection machine B are connected by a plurality of inspection sample transport paths 4a, 4b, 4c, and 4d. The sorter A and the control device C, and the inspection device B and the control device C are connected by data transfer paths 6 and 7, respectively.

  In FIG. 1, first, a raw material O such as a grain is charged into a sorter A, while a part of the raw material O is charged as a test sample into a tester B via a path 4e. When the raw material grain is put into the sorter A, first, the sorting operation is performed by the primary sorter D, and the raw material grain is divided into the primary good product 20a and the primary defective product 20b. While the primary non-defective product 20a is discharged as a product, a part of the primary good product 20a is input to the inspection machine B through the path 4a as an inspection sample. On the other hand, the primary defective product 20b is again input to the secondary sorter E, while a part thereof is input to the inspection machine B through the path 4b as an inspection sample. The primary defective product 2b thrown into the secondary sorter E is divided into a secondary good product 30a and a secondary defective product 30b by the sorter E. While the secondary good product 30a is returned to the raw material, a part of the secondary good product 30a is input to the inspection machine B through the path 4c as an inspection sample. The secondary defective product 30b is discharged as a defective product, while a part of the secondary defective product 30b is input to the inspection machine B through the path 4d.

  Both the sorter A and the inspection machine B irradiate the object with light, detect the transmitted light and reflected light of the object with a camera such as a CCD, and classify or sort the object by determining the detection signal. It is the device made as. FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram showing the configuration of the inspection machine B, but the sorter A is an apparatus having a substantially equivalent configuration. In the inspection machine B shown in FIG. 2, a large number of grains supplied from the hopper 9 are caused to flow down through the chute 1 at a high speed in parallel. At the lower end of the chute 1, an inspection device (2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, 4a, 4b, 6a, 6b, 7a, 7b, 8a, 8b) for optically examining each grain is provided. The inspection device monitors each of the grains flowing down from the chute 1 by optically examining each of the grains flowing down from the chute 1 by monitoring the line-shaped inspection region across the lower end of the chute 1. The detection signal from the inspection device is supplied to a discrimination device (comparing circuit 10, discrimination circuit 11, grain count circuit 12, control circuit 13), and the discrimination device determines the falling grain based on the supplied detection signal. Each is discriminated. Further, the data from the discriminating device is supplied to the display device 14 and aggregated to display and output the grain inspection results. Discrimination by the discriminating device is performed by a high-speed discrimination algorithm for each grain. The chute 1 has a structure composed of longitudinal grooves 17 to 21 each having a width slightly wider than the outer diameter of the grain, and is a raw material sample, a primary sorting good product sample, a primary sorting defective product sample, and a secondary sorting good product sample. In addition, the secondary sorting defective product samples are separately put into the grooves 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21 so that they can flow continuously. The inspection apparatus includes an illumination light source 3a, 3b, 3c, 8a, 8b that can irradiate the inspection area across the grain flow, and a CCD that can detect the inspection area in a line shape across the grain flow. Cameras 2a, 2b, 6a, 6b, and background plates 4a, 4b, which are provided in a line across the flow of the grain in the inspection area and make the light from the grain as the inspection object clearer. 7a and 7b. The camera is mainly composed of visible light cameras 2a and 2b for detecting the color of the grain and infrared light cameras 6a and 6b for detecting the foreign matter. The inspection device can detect transmitted light transmitted through the grain and reflected light from the surface of the grain. The discriminating device is provided with a plurality of thresholds corresponding to each so as to discriminate grain burn, discoloration, foreign matter, etc., and discriminates by the data output by comparing the signal from the camera with the threshold by a comparison circuit It is made to do. As described above, the inspection machine B can continuously inspect a plurality of inspection samples supplied from the chute 1 divided into a plurality of grooves at a high speed for each groove. It can respond quickly.

  The control device C is connected so as to be able to send and receive data to and from the sorting machine A and the testing machine B via paths 6 and 7, respectively, and controls and monitors the status of the sorting machine A and the testing machine B. Has been made to be able to. The control device C issues a count value request command to the inspection machine B via the path 6. In response to this request command, all of the count data that has been counted since the last count data output is sent from the inspection machine B to the control device C. This count value is a value obtained by counting the number of grains for each type that can be discriminated, and a count value related to the grains to be input to the inspection machine B is sent via each of 40a, 40b, 40c, 40d, and 40e. The control device C calculates the mixing rate of defective products in the input raw material based on the sent count data value, determines the setting parameter of the sorter based on the calculated defective product mixing rate, and passes the path 7. Then, the sorter A is controlled so as to become the determined setting parameter. The control device C can also output data as a graph or a table as needed.

  Control in the control system of the present invention is performed as follows. If the set value was determined after inspecting non-defective products and defective products after sorting to determine the defective product mixing rate, when the defective product mixing rate in the raw material changed and deviated from the proper sorting operation It takes time for the sorting to return to the original state. If there is data for each set value in an appropriate sorting state for all defective product mixing ratios of raw materials, the optimum setting is always immediately called even if the mixing ratio fluctuates. An appropriate sorting state is a state in which the defective product mixture rate of a sample to be inspected sampled in a certain route is within a certain range of values (target value).

  As described above, the optimum set value can be obtained immediately from the past data, but there may be a deviation between the measured defective sample contamination rate and the target value. Therefore, a setting parameter capable of changing the defective product mixing rate is designated to finely adjust the defective product mixing rate.

  If the number of data indicating the relationship between the raw material defective product mixing ratio and each set value is not sufficient, a calculation process such as regression analysis is performed on the existing data to obtain the relationship between the defective product mixing ratio and each set value. It is possible to seek a relationship. Each set value when the target value is reached while the system is operating is stored in the system as data indicating the relationship between the defective product mixing rate of the raw material and the set value, and is fed back to calculation processing for obtaining the relationship. You can also.

  FIG. 3 is a flowchart of the parameter setting process of the control apparatus C. Grain number data is sampled from the inspection machine B, and the mixing rate for each inspection sample (20a, 20b, 3a, 3b and raw material in FIG. 1) is calculated. Next, it is determined whether or not the calculated mixing rate exceeds the set upper limit value of each mixing rate, and if it exceeds, an alarm is issued (alarm processing 1). On the other hand, if the upper limit is not exceeded, if it is necessary to recalculate, the relationship between the defective product mixing ratio m of the raw material and the selected set value R is recalculated, and each setting is determined by the latest m and R data. The relationship is obtained, and the ideal set value R (m) when the defective product mixture rate of the raw material is m is obtained. Next, the currently measured mixing rate x of the control target is compared with the target mixing rate V. When x = V, the ideal set value R (m) and fine adjustment set value F of the sorting set value R when the defective product mixture rate m of the raw material, and the defective product mix rate of the raw material is m at that time are obtained. Remember for feedback. On the other hand, if x <V, the correction value s is decreased. In this case, if the correction value s is smaller than the lower limit value L-s of the correction value, an alarm (alarm processing 2) is issued. Conversely, if x> V, the correction value s is increased. In this case, if the correction value s is larger than the upper limit value L + s of the correction value, an alarm is issued (alarm processing 3). The fine adjustment set value F is calculated by F = F (m) + s. Here, F (m) is an ideal set value when the defective product mixing rate of the raw material is m, and s is the correction value obtained above. When the control switch is turned on, the stored set values of m, R (m), and F are transmitted to the sorter A, and the sorter A is newly set based on the transmitted set values.

  In this way, in the control system according to the present invention, the defect rate mixing rate of the input raw material is inspected every moment by the inspection machine B and fed back to the sorting machine A. Sorting control is performed, and fine and accurate control is possible.

  FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing the configuration of another embodiment of the control system of the present invention. This embodiment has the same configuration as that of the embodiment of FIG. 1 except that a secondary sorter is not provided. Accordingly, the primary defective product 2b is discharged as a defective product while a part thereof is input as an inspection sample into the inspection machine B, and the primary non-defective product is discharged as a non-defective product while a part thereof is an inspection sample. B. This control system is suitable for the case of relatively coarse sorting with respect to the first embodiment.

  The control system according to the principle of the present invention is particularly suitable for the selection of rice grains, but can be appropriately applied to the selection of all grains other than rice grains.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the overall configuration of an embodiment of a grain sorter control system according to the present invention. FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram showing the configuration of the inspection machine B. FIG. 3 is a flowchart of the parameter setting process of the control apparatus C. FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing the configuration of another embodiment of the control system of the present invention.

Explanation of symbols

A sorter, B inspection machine, C controller,
D primary sorter, E secondary sorter,
40a, 40b, 40c, 40d, 40e Inspection sample transport path,
6, 7 data transfer path,
1 chute, 2a, 2b, 6a, 6b camera,
3a, 3b, 3c, 8a, 8b Illumination light source,
4a, 4b, 7a, 7b background plate,
9 hopper, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 groove,

Claims (4)

A control system for a grain sorter,
A sorter that continuously detects and sorts the raw material grains flowing down in parallel to the inspection area at a high speed for each grain in a line across the flow of the raw material grains;
A part of the raw grain and the grain sorted by the sorter are supplied so as to flow down in parallel to the inspection area, and the supplied grain is separated into a line across the flow of the grain. An inspection machine for continuously detecting and discriminating and classifying each grain at high speed;
A control system configured to set the sorting setting value of the sorting machine based on the discrimination classification result of the testing machine so that the discrimination classification result of the testing machine becomes a target ideal value. The control system according to claim 1,
Both the sorter and the inspection machine can optically detect the inspection area at a high speed for each groove in a line across the grain flow, and the detection result can be processed at high speed by a high speed determination algorithm. A control system composed of detection devices of the same type having the same criteria. The control system according to claim 1,
The control system in which the sorter is composed of only a primary sorter or a primary sorter and a secondary sorter. The control system according to claim 1,
The control system in which the raw material grain, the selected good quality grain, and the poorly selected quality grain are put into the separate grooves in the chute and can be continuously flowed to the inspection machine.

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