This machine can sort M&Ms and Skittles BY COLOR
The future is here.
Willem Pennings, a 19 year old Mechanical Engineering student has built a machine that can sort M&M candy by color.
"The machine is able to sort M&M’s and Skittles by colour by performing optical measurements using the RGB sensor." he explains on his blog.
"It can be modified to sort any type of coloured object, as long as the individual pieces have a regular shape with even dimensions."
Which means that yes, it can work it's magic on Skittles and Smarties too!
Pennings created the epic 3-D printed, DIY project entierly in his free time over a period of months. The remarkable machine takes 2-3 minutes to sort a 300 g bag of Skittles / M&M’s and sorts about 2 pieces per second.
While at first glance, this machine may seem to have with no practical application (other than sorting candy of course!), commenters on reddit have been quick to point out it's potential.
"This sort of technology is being used in in food production all the time. ... precision agriculture is starting to use "color sorting" technology in conjunction with fertilizing and spray rigs to perform smart spraying, where only the plants/weeds get sprayed." said one user.
Others saw appliations close to home: "Oh my gosh. I need this for my chemistry class! I'm always sorting colors so students can use them for building models of molecules!"
Regardless of whether William sells his machine, as some commenters have suggested, or not, we think this talented man has a very bright future ahead of him!
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