I am an electrical engineer, making a hobby project on an automated unwanted-material-removal system in grains and pulses (rice, wheat, etc). I am well versed with programming and electrical stuff, but I am stuck at one point with the mechanical design.
My system uses a camera located on top of a conveyor belt. The camera scans the belt and identifies various impurities on the belt (using an intelligent machine learning algorithm). A brush is positioned further down the belt that pushes the impurities off the belt.
My idea for the system is to simply make the device sit in any container, with the belt part projecting out of the container. A tumbler below the belt will collected the purified grains. Sort of the things that you see in rock crushing plants.
So, for this, I need to design a mechanical system that lifts the rice and puts / pours onto the conveyor belt. I am unable to come up with any solid design, given that I am from an electrical engineering background. And the system should be low powered, dust resistant and should work with one slowly rotating motor (or maybe a fast motor with a set of step-down gear system)
Can anyone suggest me a good starting point for such systems or what design I can use to achieve the same?
Note: The quantity of rice or grains moved in a unit time is very small, say a handful.