Development of a Full-View-Type Grading Cup for Automated Sweet Cherry Sorters
and Yuepeng Song 1,2,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors
The work submitted for review requires minor corrections and revisions.
In my opinion, major corrections are required to the conclusions of the analysis and research conducted.
All comments are included in the manuscript.
What is the main question addressed by the research?
The question in the paper was formulated and described. It is a qualitative classification of fruit using computer vision.
Is it relevant and interesting?
The use of vision techniques is innovative and in this respect the work is interesting. The use of computer vision that the authors have employed improves accuracy and speeds up the process. As for the choice of subject matter, I have no comments.
How original is the topic?
There is already a lot of work on computer vision. What is new in this work is the design of the instrumentation and the way the fruit is rotated and the images are taken
What does it add to the subject area compared with other published material?
In my opinion, what is new is the data collection technique, i.e. the way in which the images are taken. The rotation of the fruit and the distribution of forces were analysed.
Is the paper well written?
The work requires major editorial revisions and corrections.
Is the text clear and easy to read?
Improving editorial errors and the quality of the diagrams will significantly improve the quality of the manuscript. They will make it easier to read
Are the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments presented?
The proposals call for fundamental changes. For example, the first and second is not a conclusion but a summary.
Do they address the main question posed?
Conclusion four partly answers the question posed in the manuscript, so it should be placed first and the others rewritten or revised.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The comments are in the pdf file.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Comment 1：
It has been corrected
Comment 2：
Considering the diversity of sweet cherry shapes, the cross-section of sweet cherries is assumed to be circular-like in this article. A more detailed force analysis of the cherry could not be performed due to the length of the full article. We thank you for your suggestions and will carry out further related studies in our next work.
Comment 3
Thank you for your advice, the sweet cherry, which has been corrected.
The Tieton, Huangmei, and Lapins, are common sweet cherries in the market with different size.
Comment 4
Thank you, your suggestion is very meaningful. Due to the limited length, a fixed shape 3D computer model of sweet cherry be used for kinematic simulations. We will make further related research in the next work.
Comment 5
Your considerations are reasonable. This fruit cup is designed for collecting cherry external information and for many subsequent sorting work. With the help of Adams and Design- Expert to assist the design work can speed up the research progress and reduce the cost. The optimal parameters are obtained by using design-expert's search function, so the optimal results obtained in this article are chosen under ideal conditions. The optimal results serve as a reference for realistic design work.
Comment 6
The layout of the manuscript has been corrected
Specific Comment 1
It has been corrected
Specific Comment 2
Thanks for the suggestion, “stress analysis” has been replaced with “force analysis”.
Specific Comment 3
Furthermore, the size of Young's modulus determines the ease of the double support roller deformation under small loads. Selecting a material with the right Young's modulus size can play a cushioning role to achieve the effect of stable support and reduce the fall rate.
More details in the attachment
Reviewer 3 Report
1. Please describe the drive chain between the double-roller and the driven roller.
2. “Through the stress analysis of cherry and double-roller supporter, it is found that the operating speed， young's modulus, and friction coefficient affect the success rate of full-view-type fruit cup operation.” How can we find the relationship between operating speed，young's modulus and the success rate?
3. Increasing the coefficient of friction will improve the success rate, but it will also increase the damage to the fruit. Has there been any researches of the damage to the fruit from friction?
4. How to verify that the optimal parameters obtained through simulation are correct? The level of parameters in the actural experiment is too less to show that the optimal parameters is the valid.
5. Lack of necessary discussion of experimental results in the paper
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The manuscript entitled ‘Development of a full-view-type fruit cup for automated cherry sorter’ reported a study on developing a sample holder used for a conveyor-type cherry sorter based on weighing and image analysis. Theoretical analysis, experimental and simulation studies were performed, and critical factors affecting the success rate of rotation and moving of the cherries were determined and optimized. The study presents new knowledge and has practical values. However, the quality of the presentation needs to be improved significantly before the manuscript can be considered acceptable. Here are the main questions and suggestions for the authors to consider.
1. It is recommended to change the name 'fruit cup' to 'sample holder', as fruit cup is used as the name of a food product.
2. The language of the manuscript needs significant improvement. The tense of language is messy. Past tense should be used to describe any results or works that have been completed. The language needs to be polished by a native speaker or a professional English editing service to avoid confusions and grammar errors.
3. The manuscript needs to be written in a professional way, with the structure of introduction, material and methods, results and discussion, then conclusions. Currently the manuscript is messy with methodology and results mixed up, which is not clear.
4. Line 72: Please check the number of sections in the manuscript.
5. Line 78: 30 cherries for each variety seems to be a small number of samples. Was the sample number large enough to be representative enough?
6. Please add standard deviation data to the average mass. Lapins variety: the percentage did not add up to 100%, why?
7. Figure 3: What was '1.5IQR'in the legend?
8. Please add proper subtitle to Figure 8 besides the main texts. What is a, b and c? The subtitles should describe the figures clearly and concisely.
9. Figure 11, what are the characters in the figure? Do the authors want the readers to read them? If yes, please mark them clearly. If not, please remove them.
10. Line 235-239: Please write this paragraph more clearly to improve the readability.
11. Line 246-247: Based on previous discussion, the data used in the Box-Behnken design was obtained from model simulation, not experiments. Could the authors explain where did the data come from?
12. The conditions in Table 3 and Table 2 did not match, could the authors explain?
13. Did the authors perform replications in the experiments? Based on Table 4, it seems like no replications were performed. Table 4: Since you did not perform replications, the degree of freedom associated with the error term was too low, thus the power of the ANOVA test is low. The authors must perform replicate experiments to guarantee at least 20 degrees of freedom for your case to make the results meaningful.
14. Line 256-258: Your ANOVA results do not provide such information on which factor had higher influence. ANOVA test only tells you which factor had significant influence. Table 4 suggested that only the first order terms and the x32 term were significant in the model, why did your regression model keep all the terms?
15. Table 6 is very confusing. After optimization the success rate was even lower, does that mean the target of optimization was to lower the success rate?
16. The conclusion should be a concise paragraph that describe the main values and significance of this study. Currently, the conclusion is only a brief summary of the works done in this paper.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
1. I suggest that the responses to comments 1 and 2 should be added to the revised version.
2. The responses to comments 4 and 5 are not very adequate and need to be refined
Author Response
The responses to comments 1 and 2 have been added to line 171-174 and line 229-232, respectively.
The response to comment 4: With the help of Adams and Design- Expert to assist, the design work can speed up the research progress and reduce the cost. The optimal parameters are obtained by using design-expert's search function. Simulation is the analysis of specific factors under ideal conditions, while there are various uncertainties in real situations. The optimal results just serve as a reference for realistic design work. There are various uncertainties in real situations, such as the vibration of the drive motor, the test table is not fixed in place and other factors will have an impact on the sweet cherry in the operation, which causes the rate of sweet cherry falling to increase and the success rate to decrease.
The response to comment 5 has been added to 353-366
Reviewer 4 Report
The authors have adequately addressed my questions and comments.
Author Response
Thank you for your work
