Accuracy of Various Methods to Estimate Volume and Weight of Symmetrical and Non-Symmetrical Fruits using Computer Vision

Many researchers have used images to measure the volume and weight of fruits so that the measurement can be done remotely and non-contact. There are various methods for fruit volume estimation based on images, i.e., Basic Shape, Solid of Revolution, Conical Frustum, and Regression. The weight estimation generally uses Regression. This study analyzed the accuracy of these methods. Tests were done by taking images of symmetrical fruits (represented by tangerines) and non-symmetrical fruits (represented by strawberries). The images were processed using segmentation in saturation color space to get binary images. The Regression method used Diameter, Projection Area, and Perimeter as features that were extracted from the binary images. For symmetrical fruits, the best accuracy was obtained with the Linear Regression based on Diameter (LDD), which gave the highest R2 (0.96 for volume and 0.93 for weight) and the lowest RMSE (5.7 mm3 for volume and 5.3 gram for volume). For non-symmetrical fruits, the highest accuracy for non-symmetric fruits was given by the Linear Regression based on Diameter (LRD) and Linear Regression based on Area (LRA) with an R2 of 0.8 for volume and weight. The RMSE for LRD and LRA for strawberries was 3.3 mm3 for volume and 1.4 grams for weight.