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Volume 3, Issue 4 — January/February 1999 . . |
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| FY 2000 Project Proposals
Due February 3 Project proposals for the FY 2000 Research Program are due February 3. The Technical Committees as well as the Steering Committee will meet during mid-February to early April to review and meritoriously select proposals within FoodPAC’s three research thrusts: Environmental, Food Safety, and Process and Product Competitiveness. Funding will be divided among the focus areas, with a distribution expected of $700,000 for Process and Product Competitiveness, $500,000 for Environmental, and $250,000 for Food Safety. Last year’s FoodPAC “Call for Program Proposals” attracted 25 proposals requesting funding in access of $3.1 million. Of these 25 proposals, 6 were continuation requests, and the remaining 19 were for new initiatives. Twelve proposals totaling $1.9 million were received in the Process and Product Competitiveness area; eight proposals totaling nearly $800,000 were received in the Environmental area; and five proposals totaling nearly $400,000 were received in the Food Safety area. The committee ultimately selected 12 proposals for funding at a total level of $1.994 million. Five of the projects were in the Process and Product Competitiveness area, four in the Environmental area, and three in the Food Safety area. Four of the six continuation proposals ultimately received funding. The proposal format is available on the Web at foodpac.gatech.edu. You can also request submission guidelines by e-mail at nancy.kelley@gtri.gatech.edu or call (404) 894-3412.  Fiscal Year 1998–1999 Report to Industry Highlights Research Results  FoodPAC’s Fiscal Year 1998–1999 Report to Industry
is now available. The report gives an overview of the Traditional Industries Program,
provides the FoodPAC organizational chart and calendar of events, highlights the
research results of 12 projects conducted during FY 1998 as well as activity plans
for FY 1999, and gives a detailed listing of the FY 1999 program projects with contact
information.The report is available to all members of Georgia’s food processing industry, and can be obtained by calling Nancy Kelley at (404) 894-3412 or e-mail nancy.kelley@gtri.gatech.edu.
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. | Project
Spotlight Low-Cost Integrated Machine Vision System for Food Quality Grading  Georgia Tech and Durand-Wayland, Inc. have
been working to develop an automated vision screening system for defect detection
and grading of fruits and meats. The research team recently completed development
of a prototype system for automated vision screening of grapefruit. The PC-based,
dual processor pentium machine with camera component was interfaced with a commercial
fruit handling system. Using G.E.O.R.G.E. (Grapefruit Evaluation with On-line Recognition
Grading Environment), researchers were able to screen one grapefruit per second,
which is an order of magnitude away from the required 10 grapefruits per second.
Work will continue to develop hardware that will increase the system’s speed to a
point where it can screen 10 grapefruits per second.The team also tested and further trained the system’s neural nets. To date, the neural nets have been trained from a database of more than 1,600 images of quality defects such as skin breakdown, wet bottom, sunburn, etc. During testing, the researchers noted, however, that isolated spots or even texture on the grapefruit would be classified as defects, resulting in a higher percentage of defective area on the grapefruit. To alleviate this problem, a new approach was used that looked at a “window” around each pixel being processed. This ensured greater accuracy. Tests also showed that defect detection was not very good on the edges of the grapefruit, due mainly to the effects of nonuniform lighting. Researchers found that an eight-light (as opposed to a four-light) system was fairly adequate to ensure near uniform lighting. In addition, researchers further improved the modeling of grapefruit. They were able to develop a technique that showed a full view of all surfaces of the grapefruit. This avoided image overlap and ensured optimization. Research Team Members: Georgia Tech–Wayne Daley (principal investigator), Ken Durden, Philip Giacomazza, Harish Kotbagi, and Tim Smith/Durand-Wayland, Inc.–Bill Leverett Traditional Industries Report Now Available  The 1998–1999 Progress Report from Georgia’s
Traditional Industries and the University System of Georgia is also now available.
The report highlights the accomplishments of Georgia’s three traditional industries
(pulp and paper; food processing; and apparel, carpet, and textiles), and details
their impact on the state’s economy. For more information, contact Susan Shows at
(404) 894-6113 or e-mail susan.shows@edi.gatech.edu. Remember… Submit comments and story ideas to the Editor at (404) 894-3412 or angela.colar@gtri.gatech.edu |
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