Sorting of Fresh Tea Leaf Using Deep Learning and Air Blowing

The sorting of machine-picked fresh tea leaves after mechanized harvesting remains a challenge because of the complex morphological characteristics and physicochemical properties of fresh tea leaves. First, the recognition results of four types of models, namely, YOLOv5, YOLOv3, Fast RCNN, and SSD, were compared. It was found that YOLOv5, with guaranteed recognition accuracy, had a recognition speed of 4.7 ms/frame (about four times that of the second ranked YOLOv3). Therefore, this study presents a novel fresh tea leaf sorting system that provides rapid and high-precision multi-channel sorting for four grades of tea leaves using a tea leaf recognition model based on the You Only Look Once (YOLOv5) deep learning model. Subsequently, a raw dataset, consisting of 6400 target images of different grades and different moisture contents, was used to evaluate three different optimization methods. Among these, the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) optimization method was found to provide the best model training results with an average recognition accuracy of 98.2%. In addition, the recognition efficacy of the recognition model was found to be positively correlated with the gradient coverage of tea’s moisture content in the training set. Theoretical analysis was then conducted, along with the experimental investigation of the air-blowing force on the fresh tea leaves in the sorting process, with 30° determined to be the optimal air-blowing angle. Finally, the overall results showed that the construction of the full moisture content training set enabled a model recognition accuracy of up to 88.8%, a recall of 88.4%, a recognition speed of 4.7 ms/frame, and an overall sorting accuracy of 85.4%. This result is promising for multi-channel sorting of fresh tea leaf grades in complex situations, and as such provides a strong basis for the application of tea leaf sorting equipment.