Automated mobile-based grader for Piper Nigrum

Pepper or the scientific name Piper Nigrum is grown predominantly in the state of Sarawak, Malaysia. Currently, processed pepper berries are graded semi-automatically. This process is time consuming and error prone as it is very much dependent on the experience of the human pepper grader. In this paper we present the study, design, construction and analysis of a fully automated mobile-based prototype application to grade the pepper berries. Specifically, we studied the suitable approaches to capture and process the digital image of pepper berries using smart phones. With the aim to minimize the sensory gap and on-site grading capability, we show that LadA, an automated mobile-based grading application is possible for classifying the pepper berries into its respective grades.