Excerpt from The Commercial Potato Peeling Industry: A Survey The comercial potato peeling industry began as a service to restaurants. In 1931 a plant located in the metropolitan area of Boston, Mass. Peeled potatoes and delivered them to restaurants for 1; cents a pound. The potatoes were delivered in milk cans containing water or a special solution to keep them from turning dark. It was not until 1936 that the industry was able to deliver its product in dry-pack form. By the time the survey was carried out (august-september 19510, more than 100 plants were operating in the United States. Approximately million bushels of potatoes were utilized by these plants during 1953, producing nearly 115 million pounds of finished product. Nearly 85 percent of the production consisted of french-fry Sticks ranging from to of an inch in size and of crinkle-cut slices. Other styles consisted of whole potatoes ior boiling or mashing, slices for hash browning, and small quantities of diced potatoes for salads and canning. Peeled potatoes were being sold net only to restaurants, but also to hotels, hospitals, amusement park concessions, other institutional eating places, and in small quantities to retail Stores. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Difficult multivariate industrial control problems can be solved by combining standard control theory, adaptive computer vision algorithms and intelligent modeling into an overarching generalized control system. Creating the foundations for such a system, to be implemented on an industrial potato peeler, was the scope of this thesis. Computer vision algorithms that provided quantifiable metrics from the peeling process were developed using data gathered at a potato research center. Experiments were performed controlling the steamtime and pressure of the peeler and the size and seasonality of the potatoes. Thermal signatures and optical videos of peeled potatoes were recorded throughout testing. It was found that smaller potatoes are more difficult to peel and changes in pressure do not correlate with changes in peel efficiency. Recommendations were made for the next steps towards intelligent control of industrial potato peeling processes.