ABSTRACT
The fishing and fish product industries worldwide are facing tremendous challenges from more stringent health testing requirements as well as overriding manpower cost and unavailability increases. This chapter presents the findings of a significant research program carried out in collaboration between university and industry. It shows the classes of problems where vision is applicable. The chapter summarizes the specific vision hardware and architecture requirements. It reviews the optical properties of skin and flesh of different species in order to build the illumination part of a vision system. Fish product sorting speed is dictated by the output rate from filleting, chopping, wateijet cutting or other machinery. The outer skin or epidermis of a fish secretes a large amount of mucus which serves partly to reduce the frictional resistance of the water and partly as a barrier to parasites. The relative fluorescence intensity decreases about 50% when the bones are covered with 1.0 mm of flesh.
