Method and apparatus for harvesting crop material

A method of harvesting agricultural crop material by means of a machine, comprising the steps of:

• determining a proportion of at least one product in a mixture of products containing fruit and bodies foreign to the fruit by the following sub-steps:
• taking shots in the near infrared by apparatus on said machine to obtain at least one initial image of the mixture to be examined;
• thresholding comprising the allocation, to each pixel of the image, of one out of two extreme grey levels, corresponding to the initial grey level of the pixel in relation to a determined threshold;
• determining the outlines of patterns in the image produced by the thresholding substep with a first extreme grey level corresponding to the foreign bodies;
• reducing in a peripheral and regular fashion, the area of said patterns by allocating a second extreme grey level to the pixels involved in order to obtain an intermediate image;
• and
• enlarging, in a peripheral and regular fashion, the area of the patterns of the first extreme grey level of the intermediate image, in order to reconstitute the image to be submitted to the recording substep, the peripheral expansion being performed by a same number of pixels as the peripheral reduction carried out to obtain the intermediate image;
• and
• recording, over at least one zone of the image produced by the thresholding, of the number of pixels of at least one extreme grey level to determine an area ratio between zones occupied respectively by crop material and foreign bodies in the image;
• averaging area ratios calculated over a series of images to calculate a determined proportion;
• and
• using the determined proportion to adapt at least one operating parameter of the machine which has an effect on said proportion.

In a machine for harvesting fruit growing on fruit trees or bushes planted in rows, having a high clearance chassis for travelling across fields;

• a shaker assembly mounted on said chassis to detach said fruit from said trees or bushes;
• and at least one conveyor for gathering the detached said fruit and guiding it into at least one temporary storage bin, the improvement comprising:
• at least one device for determining a proportion of at least one product in a mixture of products, such as fruit and bodies foreign to the fruit, including:
• apparatus mounted on said machine for taking shots in near infrared of said mixture of products to be examined;
• means for processing the images to determine an area ratio between fruit and foreign bodies in at least one zone of an image obtained by said shot taking means;
• and
• means for controlling at least one operating parameter of the machine in relation to the proportion determined by said determining device.