Oil palm is an important industry that has contributed to income and support to the economic sector especially for Malaysia and Indonesia. However, most of the equipment in the oil palm industry is still operated manually. This work developed a system to separate bunches of oil palm fruit using color sensors according to maturity level. Fruit color plays a decisive point in determining fruit maturity. Here, a specific threshold point of red green blue (RGB) was obtained for the determination of the maturity level of oil palm fruit. Point values of < 120, 120 < x < 150 and > 150 represent the maturity levels of unripe, under ripe and ripe, respectively. This paper is the first to report the RGB points for use in the development of automated oil palm segregation system in the oil palm plantation industry. Thus, this paper will pave the way in producing an accurate and reliable oil palm separation system, which in turn has a positive effect in reducing human error. In the future, a set of sensors is proposed to detect a bunch of the oil palm fruits. This further can speed up the segregation process and more suitable for adaptation to the industry.

A nanogenerator (NG) is an energy harvester device that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy on a small scale by relying on physical changes. Piezoelectric semiconductor materials play a key role in producing high output power in piezoelectric nanogenerator. Low cost, reliability, deformation, and electrical and thermal properties are the main criteria for an excellent device. Typically, there are several main types of piezoelectric materials, zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods, barium titanate (BaTiO3) and lead zirconate titanate (PZT). Among those candidate, ZnO nanorods have shown high performance features due to their unique characteristics, such as having a wide-bandgap semiconductor energy of 3.3 eV and the ability to produce more ordered and uniform structures. In addition, ZnO nanorods have generated considerable output power, mainly due to their elastic nanostructure, mechanical stability and appropriate bandgap. Apart from that, doping the ZnO nanorods and adding doping impurities into the bulk ZnO nanorods are shown to have an influence on device performance. Based on findings, Ni-doped ZnO nanorods are found to have higher output power and surface area compared to other doped. This paper discusses several techniques for the synthesis growth of ZnO nanorods. Findings show that the hydrothermal method is the most commonly used technique due to its low cost and straightforward process. This paper reveals that the growth of ZnO nanorods using the hydrothermal method has achieved a high power density of 9 µWcm−2.