Meet the Jller: a robotic system that autonomously sorts pebbles from rivers by their geologic age. For this project, stones from the German river Jller were used. The machine has a 2×4 meter platform to analyze the stones and sort them.
The sorting process happens in two steps: Intermediate, pre-sorted patterns are formed first, to make space for the final, ordered alignment of stones, defined by type and age. Starting from an arbitrary set of stones, this process renders the inherent history of the river visible.
The machine uses a computer vision system to perform analysis and extract color, color composition, and other data points. More info is available here.