Neya Systems awarded contract for produce classification

Neya Systems (Wexford, PA, USA) has been awarded a contract worth over $145,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop novel classification technologies that potentially could be used across the produce production and delivery supply chain.

The company has identified the need for such new techniques to help small farmers compete with large, corporate enterprise farms in terms of efficiency, quality control and product pricing.

In the NSF-funded Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project, researchers will investigate the feasibility of employing high-resolution, 3-D color models of food produce captured with structured light technology to identify and sort produce by quality. They will determine the feasibility of accomplishing this within the real-time constraints of an in-field harvesting system.

If achievable, the technology could be integrated into produce collection machinery and used to cost-effectively sort individual food items based on cosmetic imperfections.

Neya Systems was founded by Dr. Parag Batavia, in 2009. Prior to starting Neya, Parag was the Director of Projects and Operations at Applied Perception, and managed the company’s integration into Foster-Miller/QinetiQ-North America after it was acquired in 2007. Parag has a Ph.D in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon, and an MBA from Drexel University's LeBow College of Business.

-- by Dave Wilson, Senior Editor, Vision Systems Design