Fruit Battery Method for Oil Palm Fruit Ripeness Sensor and Comparison with Computer Vision Method

Oil palm ripeness’ main evaluation procedure is traditionally accomplished by human vision. However, the dependency on human evaluators to grade the ripeness of oil palm fresh fruit bunches (FFBs) by traditional means could lead to inaccuracy that can cause a reduction in oil palm fruit oil extraction rate (OER). This paper emphasizes the fruit battery method to distinguish oil palm fruit FFB ripeness stages by determining the value of load resistance voltage and its moisture content resolution. In addition, computer vision using a color feature is tested on the same samples to compare the accuracy score using support vector machine (SVM). The accuracy score results of the fruit battery, computer vision, and a combination of both methods’ accuracy scores are evaluated and compared. When the ripe and unripe samples were tested for load resistance voltage ranging from 10 Ω to 10 kΩ, three resistance values were shortlisted and tested for moisture content resolution evaluation. A 1 kΩ load resistance showed the best moisture content resolution, and the results were used for accuracy score evaluation comparison with computer vision. From the results obtained, the accuracy scores for the combination method are the highest, followed by the fruit battery and computer vision methods.

Triple Flat-Type Inductive-Based Oil Palm Fruit Maturity Sensor

This paper aims to study a triple flat-type air coil inductive sensor that can identify two maturity stages of oil palm fruits, ripe and unripe, based on the resonance frequency and fruitlet capacitance changes. There are two types of triple structure that have been tested, namely Triple I and II. Triple I is a triple series coil with a fixed number of turns (n = 200) with different length, and Triple II is a coil with fixed length (l = 5 mm) and a different number of turns. The peak comparison between Triple I and II is using the coefficient of variation cv, which is defined as the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean to express the precision and repeatability of data. As the fruit ripens, the resonance frequency peaks from an inductance–frequency curve and shifts closer to the peak curve of the air, and the fruitlet capacitance decreases. The coefficient of the variation of the inductive oil palm fruit sensor shows that Triple I is smaller and more consistent in comparison with Triple II, for both resonance frequency and fruitlet capacitance. The development of this sensor proves the capability of an inductive element such as a coil, to be used as a sensor so as to determine the ripeness of the oil palm fresh fruit bunch sample.