AUTOMATED COLOR SORTING MACHINE

M. Afnan Aziz1, Hamza Khan2, Obaidullah Raja3

1
[email protected], 2 [email protected], 3 [email protected]

ABSTRACT

With the ever increasing power of current technology, we are able to achieve desired tasks at a much
faster rate with much more accuracy. But that is by no means the end of the capabilities of such devices
and by taking this concept of management and control a step further, humanity has enabled themselves
the ability to control various electronic devices with some gadgets and sensors in order to make the device
completely void of any human intervention.

For sorting different objects within an industry, automated optical sorting is very convenient to use. By
using either the objects color or size as the classification criteria that is sensed by the optical sensor, the
product/object is sorted through various motors and belts.

Due to its ever growing importance within the various industries, our group has done extensive research
on the device and has prepared a working model for demonstration purposes, with the help of our
supervisors, ENGR. WASEEM ABBASI, and ENGR. USMAN ZIA.

1. INTRODUCTION More often than not, the solution that an industry

comes to is to automate its production procedure
Although many material sorting methods have by adding several automate sensing and
existed since ancient times, the critical focus of controlling systems to govern their production
modern industries has shifted to increase their lines. One such system is the color sorting
production efficiency, as it is widely regarded as system that sorts different colored objects as
the key to corporate success. In order to increase required by the programmer. The main
this efficiency an industry must:
advantages of such a system are:
 Increase its speed of Production
 Less time required to sort the different
 Lower it’s Labor Cost.
colored product.
 Improve the quality of its product being
 less possibility of errors/mistakes as there is
supplied.
minimum human effort
 Less labor required as most task is
computerized.
The above factors greatly increase the overall
efficiency of an industry and in turn its
profitability. Due to this reason, we have chosen
the Color Sorting Machine as our semester
project, as we hope to increase the awareness
regarding the benefits from this system.

1.1 OBJECTIVES
 To understand the inner workings of an Figure 1. Basic Block Diagram of Color Sorting Machine
automated system.
 To develop a color based sorting system that 1.3 TYPES OF COLOR SORTING
allows us to sort similarly shaped but MACHINE:
differently colored objects.
 To demonstrate how such a system can be Generally, the system is divided to two
implemented within the existing industrial
types:
structure.

1.3.1 CHUTE SORTER

1.2 DESCRIPTION  The object/product slides over a chute
due to gravity, thus it mostly travels
In simple terms, a color sorting machine system vertically.
is a semi-automated system that differentiates  The different objects collide and
between different colored objects and its increase the chance for breakage and
friction.
assembly consists of a computer chip attached to
 More common in low cost, high capacity
an optical color sensing device that senses and
industries, e.g., grain industry.
interprets the different colors and behaves
 Chutes are specially designed for the
accordingly due to its internal programming.
object to be transferred.
Some common applications of such a system
include: 1.3.2 BELT SORTER
 Mechanized processing systems  Object/Product remains relatively static as it
 Material Auto-handling systems. simply moves horizontally over a conveyor
 Industrial robotics. belt
 Object is transferred smoothly without any
However, any device/system whose breakage.
functionality is to be made independent of  More common in high cost, fragile and high
human supervision may employ color sensing, accuracy industries, such as candy,
monitoring and controlling capabilities through vegetables, and nuts industries.
this system. The basic block diagram of our  As the belt can be used to transport all
device is as given below: shapes of goods, no special designing is
need.

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 Figure 2. Comparison of Chute and Belt Color Sorting Machines

2. METHODOLOGY
sensors or simply users inputs through an
interaction module because of different pre-
We have implemented the basic idea, of defined/pre-programmed conditions within the
convenience, behind the concept of a Color Arduino UNO.
Sorting Machine, through a small scale model,
and have differentiated its overall working into
four parts, namely: 2.1.2 TCS 230 COLOR SENSOR
 Top Servo Motor Control. It is a CMOS integrated circuit hosting a color to
 Color Sensing frequency convertor, a combination of
 Color Monitoring. configurable silicon photodiodes and a current to
 Bottom Servo Motor Control. frequency convertor unit giving rise to a square
wave output of 50% Duty cycle and a frequency
proportional to the light intensity incident on the
2.1 EQUIPMENT USED photodiode sensor.

For the above mentioned purposes we have used The photodiode sensor actually consists of an 8x8
the following devices to realize our project: matrix of small photodiodes with each group of
two rows having a different colored filter than the
rest. These colored filters are red, blue, green and
2.1.1 ARDUINO UNO clear, with all having 16 diodes to them,
respectively, connected in parallel and each having
A general purpose microcontroller board, which
uniform parameters of 120umx120um in size and
can be programmed to exhibit a wide range of
on 144um centers.
behaviors, as required by the programmer, based
on different stimuli from The TCS-230 senses different colors as a
combination of their red, green and blue

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components, separately measured by the sensor The various pin voltage level configurations to
through different pin voltage level select which component is to be filtered and
configurations of pins S2 and S3, while the what the frequency should be scaled to are:
output frequency can be scaled to three pre-set
levels of 20%, 75% and 100% with each
particular frequency scaling level selected by the
user through the different pin voltage level
configurations of pins S0 and S1.

(a) (b)

Table 1. a) Photodiode Selection pins, b) Frequency Scaling pins

2.1.3 SERVO MOTORS

A servo motor is a linear actuator or a self
contained electric device that allows a
programmer to control its rotation, angular
position, acceleration and velocity, etc. it
consists of an assembly of a suitable motor, a
Figure 3. Block Diagram of TCS-230 potentiometer and a position feedback sensor.
The motor is attached to the control wheel with
The different colors have the following mixture the help of an organized gear system which also
of red, green and blue as shown in figure: slows down the motors actual rotation speed.
The rotation of the motor causes the resistance
of potentiometer to change, which enables
precise regulation of the amount of movement
and direction by the control circuit. Thus, the
motor is turned in the appropriate direction until
the required position is reached. When the motor
is at the required position, motor power supply is
cut-off and the motor position is fixed until a
new position is fed by the user.

The desired position is sent to the motor through

electrical pulses of varying duty cycles for
different positions, from the signal wire.
Servomotors are most commonly used in
applications such as robotics,
Figure 4. Other Colors as Mixtures of Red, toys and automated manufacturing systems.
Green and Blue

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2.2 IMPLEMENTATION  After the color sensing and monitoring, as
well as the bottom servo movement, the top
servo brings the candy to the release point
Our device performs basic color sensing and
and goes back to the chute collector to
sorting functionality, and the steps we
repeat the process.
underwent in order to prepare the body of our
model are:  The top servo remains idle under the color
sensor; until the colored candy is sensed as
 The body of our model is prepared from one of our required pre-set color ranges or
3mm thin wooden (acrylic) sheets. the whole device is reset (in case there is no
more candy).
 These sheets are cut and shaped differently
for different parts of the body.
 The proper shapes are glued and nailed 2.2.2 COLOR SENSING
together as required.
 The resultant body is then covered on its  We have used a TCS-230 color to frequency
open sides by another layer of wooden sheet converting sensor for this purpose.
so as to prevent any external light from
 The sensor is glued upside down on an
affecting the color sensing procedure.
extended arm and is hanged just above a
 Proper passageways, for wiring purposes, point on the circumference made by the
are added by making adequate holes in the center of the hole on the circular arm
body walls. connected to the top servo motor.
 The different connections are made as  After the candy is brought just below the
shown, with several digital pins of our sensor, the Arduino is programmed to
Arduino used to control the sensors and measure the red, green and blue components
motors. of the colored candy, separately, through the
sensor by changing the voltage level
After preparing the structure/body of our model, configurations of pins S2 and S3.
we have implemented an accurate working
 The amount of each component is translated
principle, which is explained with separate steps
(within the sensor) into different frequencies
as shown as follows:
as scaled by the voltage levels on pins S0
and S1, and are fed to the digital pin of our
2.2.1 TOP SERVO MOTOR Arduino for monitoring.
CONTROL
2.2.3 COLOR MONITORING
 After inserting the objects/candies into the
chute collector, we power on our device.  As mentioned, the sensor converts different
color components into frequency values and
 When the device is powered on, both, the
passes the signal to the Arduino.
bottom and top servo rotate to their idle
positions.  The Arduino is programmed to realize five
different colors, all having different
 A circular arm is attached to the top servo frequency ranges for the R, G, and B
with a small hole, just larger than the size of components of a given color.
the candy, but having the same shape.
 These resultant component frequencies are
plotted within the serial monitor.
 This arm collects one piece of candy from
the queued candies from within the chute  When one of the defined colors is sensed,
and brings it to the location just below the the color is plotted in the serial monitor and
color sensor TCS-230. the bottom servo motor is moved to a pre-
defined position.

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2.2.4 BOTTOM SERVO MOTOR
CONTROL
 A second servo motor is attached just below
the release point of the top servo motor.
 As mentioned before, when one of the
defined colors is sensed the bottom servo
motor is moved to a pre-defined position.
 Thus, five possible positions are pre-defined
to the Arduino for the different colors.
 A slide like arm is attached to the bottom
servo.
 When the top servo releases the candy, the
bottom servo puts it within the required
package.

Figure 5. A Photograph of Our Device

Figure 6. Circuit Diagram of Color Sorting Machine

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2.3 PRECAUTIONS color sensed, and finding the results to
be almost identical.
Several things need to be kept in mind while
working on this project, some of which are:  The isolation of the sensing equipment
from any external light source proved to
 The motors require a voltage of up to be a key factor in stabilizing the
5V, but draw more current than the component frequencies to a great degree.
Arduino can offer, thus a separate
battery should be used to run the motors. 3.1 FUTURE POSSIBILITIES
 Proper insulation from external light
should be made to stop the fluctuations This project is only a small scale integration
of the measured frequencies, as they of a color sorting system to simply
greatly vary with the amount of light demonstrate its working. However, we can
incident on the object. also add more applications into our project
 The chute collector should be just above device, such as:
the collection point, so that the circular
arm takes one candy at a time and so that  Improving the color sensing capability
no mishaps occur during the process. of our sensor by removing any
 Some colors tend to blend together, thus hindrances such as external light and
distinct colors should be used with a color blending from within the sensing
minimum error margin of 5 units below compartment of our device and by
and above the most repeated measured decreasing the distance between the
values after testing repeatedly. sensor and the material object.
 We could use other sorts of sensors to
increase our classification criteria such
3. CONCLUSIONS as size and magnetizing ability, etc.

We have tested the assembled device under  We could implement the same device
varying circumstances and found that it through a different color sensor such as
worked up to our expectations. We sum up TCS-3200 or a user designed sensor with
the results of our repeated testing of the LDRs and LEDs.
device as follows:
 We could automate the process further
 The color sorting system worked as was by introducing object sensing sensors so
expected and it has been experimentally that motors run only when there is object
proven to work satisfactorily by adding available.
more color definitions to it.
By applying the idea of this project an industry
 All colors are correctly identified by the can easily sort the required product according to
its color. Though it has some limitations, but by
sensor and put in the correct packages.
having done some modification this concept can
be implemented in a wide range of application
 The color sensor was properly tested such as robotics and Smart Home technology,
before using it within our device, with etc.
several different objects having the same

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