PROJECT TITLE:

PLC BASED AUTOMATIC SORTING SYSTEM USING IMAGE PROCESSING

Image processing or computer vision is a technical discipline that deals with searching the ways to
automate all the work that a human visual system can do. There is a clear growth and development in
the field of automation both in industrial and residential areas. The product sorting process plays an
important role as these industries cannot afford any human errors for sorting products.

One of the most common applications of Machine Vision is the inspection of manufactured goods such
as semiconductor chips, automobiles, food and pharmaceuticals.

The use of image processing to automatically sort objects based on their shapes, size or colour is the
best method to avoid any type of error. The complete sorting system operates on image processing
using the MATLAB application & microcontroller which will control different motors in the system.

In this PLC based system, different size objects are placed on the conveyor. At the top, the camera is
mounted which is connected to Raspberry Pi. The camera and Raspberry Pi analyse the object and the
dimensions of the objects are detected. Then the signal is sent to the PLC if the object is to be accepted
or rejected according to dimensions of the object.

Then the Solenoid is actuated and the pneumatic cylinder pushes the rejected object from the
conveyor.

when product is on the conveyor belt, Sensor will detect the presence of the particular product & give
signal to the microcontroller. Then microcontroller will send this signal to the computer by serial
interfacing. Image processing software (Matlab) of the system will send the signal to the camera for
capturing the image. Once image is captured, the software will process on the captured image and will
generate signals according to requirement and which in turn the signals will be send back to
microcontroller. Accordingly the microcontroller will control the conveyer belt & pneumatic cylinder or
robotic arm. .