Artificial Intelligence Based Determination of Cracks in Eggshell Using Sound Signals

Abstract

Although the egg is a cheap food source, it is one of the valuable nutritional sources for people because of its rich nutritional values. It is also among the most consumed foods in daily nutrition. With the increase in egg production, it is very difficult to collect them with the human power in the egg production farms, to classify them according to their weights and to separate the defective (dirty and broken) eggs. Therefore, the mechanization has become a necessity in large capacity production farms. Cracks and fractures may occur in the egg shell as a result of exposure to external factors such as the transportation of eggs. The cracks or fractures that are formed leave the egg vulnerable to disease-causing micro-organisms. Before the egg sorting and packing, the broken and cracked eggs must be separated. This process is commonly carried out with manpower by which it is very difficult to obtain the necessary efficiency. In this study, the egg crack detection was performed by using Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN). As a result of the application of studied methods, the accuracy values of crack detection process were 0.99 for ANN and 1 for SVM. In addition, a data acquisition and processing program was developed in LABVIEW environment to detect cracks in real time.