To sort long agricultural products without damaging them and to miniaturize the sorting apparatus by installing holding means for holding long agricultural products such as spring onions at two points in a selecting conveyer, sorting the products during the upper face transportation of the products, and releasing the holding of the products to a plurality of sorting conveyers during the lower face transportation for sorting.
Spring onions whose outer skins are peeled by an automatic skin- peeling apparatus 1 are put one by one on a holding mechanism 25 attached to a selecting conveyer 8 by a worker 10 waiting on a throwing work stand 11 to be transported. During the upper face transportation, each onion 9 is photographed by an image reading apparatus 4 and the grade of each onion is determined by a grade judging apparatus 5 based on the width of each spring onion and the boundary position of the soft white part and the leaf part and the curved degree of the photographed image. Based on the judgment result (sorting information), when each spring onion is transported on the lower face to a plurality of sorting conveyers 22 installed in the number corresponding to the number of the sorting grades, the holding mechanism 25 is released to drop each spring onion to the corresponding sorting conveyers 22.
TSUCHIYA KENJI
KATO HIROYASU
YAGI HIROSHI
AYUKAWA TOMOTAKA
NAOWA KIYOSHI
TANGO TOSHIAKI
HITACHI ENG SERVICE