Robotics in Food Processing

2. Post-Graduate seminar
on
MOHAN NAIK. G
M. Tech ( FPT)
College of FPT & BE,
AAU, Anand.

3.  Introduction
 Reason for automating process
 History
 Component of robot
 Types of robots used in food industry
 Application of robotics in food processing sector
Meat industry
Fruit and vegetable industry
Dairy industry
Packaging
conclusion

4.  The use of robotics in the food industry has increased over recent
years, particularly in the field of processing and packaging systems
 However, the industry has not taken to the technology with the same
enthusiasm as the automotive and other industries
 Now that the technology is becoming more affordable and the
systems more intelligent, it may be feasible to automate many of the
complex and repetitive tasks that are carried out in the food industry
 The opportunity still exists to deliver significant benefits in terms of
increased food shelf life, cost reductions and flexibility (Wallin, P. J.
1997)

5.  Need to reduce direct labour
 Can’t get people to do the job
 Need to increase quality
 Difficult to do the job manually
 Need to increase production
 Difficult to meet specifications consistently
 Need to provide flexibility in processes
 Hazardous to personnel
 Eliminates a contamination source

6.  Robotics is the branch of mechanical engineering, electrical
engineering and computer science that deals with the design,
construction, operation, and application of robots, as well as
computer systems for their control, sensory feedback, and
information processing (Robot institute of America)

7.  An automatically controlled, reprogrammable,
multipurpose manipulator programmable in
three or more axes, which may be either fixed
in place or mobile for use in industrial
automation applications (ISO)
 The term robot comes from Czech and means
‘forced labour’ - coined by the Czech writer
Karel Capek in 1921 and titled “Rossum’s
Universal Robots”

8. Manual
 Fast product change
 Breaks
 Monotonous tasks
 Health claims
 Labour issues
 Training
Flexible Automation
 Quick product change
 Programmable
 Repeatable
 Changeable cell
configuration
 Responds to part
changes

10. • 1956 - George Devol applied for a patent for the first programmable robot, later
named 'Unimate'
• 1961 - First Unimate robot installed at General Motors, used for die casting and
spot welding
• 1986 - Honda starts work on its first humanoid, robot named 'E0' (later to
become ASIMO)
• 1988 - SCAMP designed as the first robot pet with emotions
• 1995- Robot used in packaging and palletisation line
• 1997- Industrial Research Ltd. New Zealand, develop robot for sheep de-fleecing
and cutting
• 1999- GTRI develop a robot for deboning of meat

11. • 1991 - First Helpmate mobile autonomous robot used in hospitals
• 1992 - Development of robot for picking of citrus fruit in spain
• 2002 - iRobot introduces Roomba, a personal robotic vacuum cleaner.
• 2004 - Reed develop robot for harvesting of mushrooms
• 2006 - The world's first robotic rotary dairy was developed by Delaval
• 2010 - NASA and General Motors join forces to develop Robonaut-2,
the new version of NASA's humanoid robot astronaut

12. Processor: The brain of the robot. It calculates the motions and
the velocity of the robot’s joints, etc.
Sensors: To collect information about the internal state of the
robot or to communicate with the outside environment
Software: Operating system, robotic software and the collection
of routines.
Rover or Manipulator : Main body of robot (Links, Joints, other
structural element of the robot)

13. Actuators: Muscles of the manipulators (servomotor, stepper
motor, pneumatic and hydraulic cylinder)
End Effecter: The part that is connected to the last joint hand of
a manipulator
Controller: Similar to cerebellum. it controls and coordinates the
motion of the actuators (Massy et al., 2010)

15. Traditional Applications – Mostly Packaging Areas
• Palletizing
• Secondary Packaging : Case packing / carton loading
• Primary Packaging : Dependent upon the products
Current and New Applications
• Handling raw or unpackaged food products :Primary Packaging
• Ready-meal construction
• Cake and pie handling
• Meat processing
• Cake decoration
• Pizza assembly
• Grading of fruit and vegetables
• Cooking
Warehouse
Source: Rudall, B. H. (1994) Reports and surveys. Robotica 12, l-6

16.  Any Robotic Automation System Specifications : Reach / Payload /
Speed
 Protection from Water and Humidity
* Sealed Design with Smooth Finish for Drainage
* Protected from water with sealed covers
* Motors and ‘electronics’
* Corrosion resistant coating
* Purged to prevent water entry and damage
* Cabling protected from water
* Locate Controls away from water damage
 Covers
Condensation inside creates corrosion
Leaks when damaged or installed incorrectly

17. The main types of robots used in the food industry are
Portal robots:
 Portal robots are mounted robotic systems that span a cubic
handling area by means of three linear axes
 The actual robotic kinematics (the moving axes) are located
above the mounting
Articulated robots:
 Articulated robots are industrial robots with multiple interacting
jointed arms that can be fitted with grippers or tools
 Articulated robots offer a high degree of flexibility

18. SCARAs:
• Selective Compliance Assembly robot Arms, or SCARAs, are a
particular form of articulated robots
• They have a single articulated arm that can only move
horizontally. They work in a similar way to human arms and are
often called ‘horizontal articulated arm robots’
Delta robots:
• Spider-like delta robots a special form of parallel robot typically
have three to four articulated axes with stationary actuators.
Because their actuators are located in the base, these kinds of
robots have only a small inertia. This allows for very high
speeds and acceleration (Khodabandehloo, 1996)

20.  Tasks in the meat processing sector are physically challenging, repetitive
and prone to worker scarcity
 Butchery tasks are unpleasant, physically arduous and carry a high risk of
worker injury. This suggests them as prime targets for the benefits of
robotisation; how- ever, the skilled nature of the butchery task, combined
with the biological variation of the raw material, poses substantial challenges
 Applications of robotics and automation in primary meat production
processes in the abattoir and cutting plant for beef, sheep/lamb and pork
meat ( Purnell et al., 2013 )

21.  Yield control, legislation, difficulties in staff availability will
increase commercial pressures and encourage more meat
processor organisations to automate, simply to maintain
throughput (Balkcom et al., 2008)
 Initially many meat automation research projects developed
spoke robots for their particular task (Ranger et al ., 2004 )
 The main aim of using an industrial robot is to reduce
production costs and occupational injuries while improving
process efficiency and hygiene

22. • Removal of hair or hide of pig , cattle/ cow (KUKA robot)
• De-fleecing sheep or pelting (Robertson)
• Evisceration and dressing

23. • Splitting
• Primal cutting (ARTEPP)

24. • Automated inspection and grading (AUTO-FOM )
• Deboning

25. • Automation and robot systems have been successful because
they perform tasks currently not possible for a human operative.
• A human butcher could not perform the multi-armed cutting and
handling operations achieved by evisceration automation.
• Even the strongest, most skilled butcher cannot match the
consistency and high-force cut accuracy achieved with robotic
primal cutting.

26. • The first automated grading facilities for fruit and vegetables
became available more than 10 years ago
• Recently, machine vision and near infrared (NIR) technologies
as well as mechatronics and computer technologies have been
employed to make these facilities more sophisticated and have
led to their use for many kinds of agricultural products
• Robot technology has proved able to handle agricultural
products delicately and with a high degree of precision, and to
gather information to create a database of products every season

27. • Since about ten years ago, packing robots and palletizing robots
have been a frequent feature in fruit grading facilities (Njoroge
et al ., 2002), while grading robots (Kondo, 2003 ), which
collect round-shaped fruits and inspect them using a machine
vision system, are now being introduced in some East Asian
countries.
• Automatic systems and robots used in agriculture then play
another important role, as they are able to keep a precise record
of their operations in databases. They then utilize that
information for the next operation or store the data either for
future use by the producer in decision-making or to provide
traceability information for quality assured foods (Kawano,
2003)

28. Harvesting of food products :
• Industrial Robot (1999) reports that, in the last 15 years,
mechanisation in farming has increased massively and the
labour force has shrunk proportionately
• Kondo et al. (1996) developed a fruit harvesting robot for use in
Japanese agriculture systems which commonly produce crops in
greenhouses and in small fields
• Reed et al. (2001) developed an end-effector for the delicate
harvesting of mushrooms

29. • Ceres et al. (1998) designed and implemented a human
aided fruit-harvesting robot (Agribot)
• The Agribot approaches the problem of fruit picking by
combining human and machine operations

32. • A grading system using robots has been developed for use with
deciduous fruits such as peaches, pears, and apples. system
automatically picks fruit from containers and inspects all sides
of the fruit (Kondo, 2003)
• Grading robot’s maximum speed is 1 m/s and its stroke is about
1.2 m. It takes the robot 2.7 s to transfer 12 fruits to trays, 0.4 s
to move down to the conveyor line, and 1 s to return once fruits
have been released. 0.15 s are spent waiting for the next batch
of fruit The total time to complete the operation is 4.25 s. This
means that one set of robots can process approximately 10,000
fruits per hour

33. • Dairy farming and processing is
one of most important economic
activity

34. Robotic or automatic milking
• Robotic or automatic milking systems (AMS) are becoming
increasingly important in dairy farming
• Automatic Milking Systems (AMS) milk cows any time without the
need for a human worker to be present
• Cows choose when to be milked and detailed data is recorded by the
robot which can be accessed remotely by computer or mobile device
• Relatively small base, robotic milking has been predicted to become
increasingly common
• DeKoning and Rodenburg (2014) estimated that Internationally there
were around 5,200 machines in operation in 2014

35. • The world's first robotic rotary dairy was developed by Delaval
• The first commercial installation has been operating at Gala, the
Dornauf farm in northern Tasmania since early 2012
• Robotic rotary milking system include:
 Activating washing system
 Changing filter sokc’s and rubber ware
 Attending to alarms
 Managing a separate herd of cows whose milk is not intended
for the factory (eg: antibiotic and colostrum cows)
 Monitoring individual cow performance
• It is most useful for herds of more than 300 cows

39. • The adoption of AMS has been shown to change the nature of
stockmanship in dairy farming
• Creates freedom and flexibility for the farmer
• Robotic milking improves the working conditions and lifestyle
of the dairy farmer
• It has economic advantages and benefits for cow health and
welfare

40. • Capital requirement is relatively high
• Need more electricity to operate system

41. • Robot-based automation ensures the kind of flexibility
• Robots are usually associated with handling repetitive tasks in a
process either in high volume production roles or where flexible
hand ling systems are needed for frequent changes
• In the packaging industry, robots generally fall into three main
arenas: pick and place applications , feed placement and
palletizing

42.  This is an area in which a multitude of products, applications
and packaging line set-ups. Frozen food, bakery and
confectionary, ice cream, meat and fish, cheese, pet food,
medical products, shampoo and perfume bottles
 Delta robot is more commonly used

43. • In the packing stage of the packaging process, robot automation
offers easy integration, increased flexibility and high reliability
• Top loading of boxes, unloading and mixing, and feeding of
products to end loaders or film wrappers is easily handled by
robot
• A ABB robot, designed and optimized for packing applications
with a payload of up to 30 kg. With a comprehensive range of
robots, controller equipment, vision technology and software
• Robot can help to optimize all kinds of packing applications,
including race track packing and tracking of moving conveyors.

44. Primary packaging
Robot

45. • Robots are mostly been used for
palletizing of bottles and crates
• Robot can transport about 30000
bottles per hour (about 1500
crates) (Karabegović et al., 2003)

48. Among the many challenges that plague the Robotics field in
India, the primary ones among them have to do with
• The high cost of adoption
• Availability of skilled talent and
• Procurement of hardware components
(Abheek, 2015)

49. Potential benefits from Robotic system
 The requirement for reduced floor space
 Improved efficiency
 Improved quality
 The ability to work in cold or hostile environments
 Increased yields and reduced wastage
 Increased consistency
 Increased flexibility for some operations (Anon. 1996)

50. • Robotics has the potential to become next frontier in the food
industries
• Manual handling of foods is not going to end soon, but still the
acceptance of automation and robotics in the industry is increasing
• Robots are populating the food industry in increasing numbers as
processors intensify their continuing, relentless search for faster, more
economic methods of production that will enable them to satisfy the
insatiable demands of modern retailers and the rapidly changing
lifestyles of consumers
• Robots increase the safety process and decrease the chances
of downtimes or production shortfall, thanks to their
reliability and availability

51. • Anon. (1996) Robotics in Sweet Production. Lebensmiffelwirtrch. 7(4): 42-
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