Quaternion number based vanilla recognition system for automating polination

Vanilla is the second most expensive spice worldwide. The high cost of vanilla has led to the problem of dangerous adulterated substitutes. Its high cost is attributed largely to the labor intensive hand pollination required where the melipona bee is not present. This article is the first known to present a machine vision system for the recognition of vanilla flowers and their stamen for pollination. We present a hypercomplex numbers based system. The present system is based on a rotational invariant basis more fitted to fast quaternion Fourier transform processing than Zernike Polynomial basis, and computer simulations. It could be used for other applications as well.