Can an industrial robot succeed both at removing the breast fillet from a chicken, and at the same time get more out of the raw materials? This is one of the questions to which researchers working on the CYCLE project now have the answer.
They have built a fully-functional robot in the lab to automate the process of extracting breast fillets from chickens. This is a task normally performed by skilled human hands. “Our aim is to automate absolutely everything we can think of on the food production line”, says Ekrem Misimi at SINTEF. This will make Norwegian food production more sustainable, both in terms of profitability and utilisation of raw materials.
Sharp-eyed robot with nimble fingers
Ekrem is a technical cyberneticist with a doctoral degree in machine vision, and has specialised in providing robots with sharp, three-dimensional vision – which in this case means eyes for the anatomy of a chicken. “Automating this process is something that no one else in the world has succeeded in doing before. Except us”, says Misimi proudly.
“We at SINTEF are the only specialists in Norway to have focused on solving these kinds of problems for the food industry”, he adds. So far, one of our results is the robot Gribbot, named because of its resemblance to a vulture’s beak (‘gribb’ is the Norwegian for vulture).
Gribbot is well equipped. It has a hand for grasping, specially developed ‘fingers’, and three-dimensional vision. Its ‘eyes’ have been borrowed from a 3D camera familiar to all games fans – the Microsoft Kinect 2. These are all needed because a chicken fillet is a delicate object that must be handled extremely carefully. The robotic hand must not spoil it with marks or other quality defects. Both the robot’s vision and its grasping hand are critical factors.
Smooth and shiny
“Generally speaking, it’s a major challenge to get a robot to process biological raw materials, because it involves automating a task that is normally performed by skilled people. The raw materials also vary in terms of their size and properties. It’s easy to deform or damage a chicken fillet”, explains Misimi. And because it’s so smooth, a chicken fillet is also an extremely reflective object. That makes it difficult to obtain fully detailed 3D images. The texture also means that the meat is hard to grip. “We realised this early on when we began our research, and were determined to develop a flexible system that could not only tackle variations in the raw materials, but also the mechanical challenges of extracting the fillet from the chicken”, says Misimi.
Mathematical ‘brain surgery’
Naturally, controlling the robot is a key factor.
The Latest on: Robot food processing
via Google News
The Latest on: Robot food processing
- The Industrial Robots Market To Witness Firm Growth In The Next 10 Years, Major Keyplayers – ABB, YASKAWA, FANUC, KUKA, Mitsubishi Electric, etc.on June 17, 2021 at 8:21 am
Automation is observed to be evolving rapidly and has eventually resulted in revolutionizing the industrial sector. Some of the major disruptive trends of technological nature that positively impact ...
- ANRA Technologies and Swiggy Make History by Launching First End-to-End BVLOS Drone Delivery Trials in Indiaon June 16, 2021 at 8:41 am
NEW DELHI, INDIA - June 16, 2021 - ANRA Technologies Private Limited, a leader in integrated airspace management, and Swiggy, India's leading on-demand delivery platform, today announced that ...
- Palletizer Market Key Trends That Will Shape The Future Of Semiconductor Industry To 2027 with Top Key playerson June 15, 2021 at 4:31 am
Palletizer Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Technology (Robotic, Low Level or Floor Level and High-Level), By Product Type (Bag, Case, Bag, Pail and Others), By ...
- Robots Aiding Expansion Of Innovative Apple Companyon June 13, 2021 at 8:54 pm
H&C apple tube filling machines automate the task of picking and packing apples at Rockit Global. Introduction of world-leading robotic technology is one of the driving forces behind a New Zealand ...
- Food Robotics Market Outlook, Competitive Strategies And Forecast up to 2028on June 7, 2021 at 6:34 am
Selbyville, Delaware, According to , the global food robotics market is expected to display a positive market trend over the forecast period of 2019-2028, exhibiting a CAGR of 15.20%. Global FOOD ...
- Robotic Microplankton Sniffer Dogon June 7, 2021 at 4:40 am
Now, an interdisciplinary collaboration between NTNU researchers and their colleagues from SINTEF Ocean is developing a smart robotic lightweight autonomous underwater vehicle (LAUV) that's programmed ...
- Robot End Effector Market Research Report 2021-2026 | Industry Insights, Share, Size, Growth, Trends and Forecaston June 6, 2021 at 8:35 pm
According to IMARC Group’s latest report, the global robot end effector market exhibited strong growth during 2015-2020. Looking forward, the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.4% during ...
- MWC’s Robot Configurations Provide Flexibilityon June 6, 2021 at 5:00 pm
Robots are becoming increasingly prevalent in the food and beverage industry, but that complexity is mostly not needed in a facility producing consistent product types and sizes.
- Gassing Sales with Carbon Footprinton May 27, 2021 at 1:09 pm
Urgent is now putting carbon footprint numbers on cartons of Brave Robot. It’s expressed in what has become a standard measure: kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent, or kgCO 2 e. Basically, this ...
- Big Bird Robot Testing Could Revamp Sanderson Chicken Factorieson May 27, 2021 at 11:31 am
The third-biggest U.S. chicken producer plans to test robots at a “big bird” processing plant in Texas ... as chicken demand from restaurants and food-service outlets is taking off and ...
via Bing News