A Computer System for Photometric Mineral Sorting

Abstract

The sorting of minerals is often done manually based on visual information. The human limitations, such as boredom, fatigue, lack of motivation, etc. can influence the sorting process and make worse the result. In most cases the sorting result, and moreover the recovery of the process, can be improved by an automatic sorting system. This sets, however, very high requirements for the system performanceThe limestone quarries of Partek have been provided with an automatic, microprocessor based sorting system. The system has been designed to be very easily adapted into various surroundings and requirements. The experiences have so far been very positiveThe system contains several computing units connected to a common bus. Due to parallel processing and special hardware modules the system is very high speed and functions in real time. The visual information from a semiconductor camera is analyzed by a preprocessing unit, which extracts different feature values for recognition. These values are fed to classification units for final classification. The whole operation is controlled by a master processor, which also communicates with an operator