The engineering properties of agricultural materials constitute important engineering data in the design of machines to be used in harvesting. A colour camera vision system was developed to distinguish between different categories of oil palm fruit bunches. The maturity or colour ripening index was based on different colour intensity. Machine vision employs a computer and camera to analyse and interpret images equivalent to the human eye and brain. The colours namely red, green and blue (RGB) of the palm oil fruit bunch were investigated using camera vision. The specimens were captured using a CCD camera, Matrox Meteor card, and Matrox Intellicam software. The laboratory results showed that the ripe fruit bunch could be differentiated from other categories of fruit bunches based on RGB intensity. A computer program written was able to differentiate the ripe fruit bunch and send a signal to the controller to activate the machine or robot arm to carry out harvesting.