Opportunities in the Foods industry
Next Previous Contents

Vision Systems & Robotics

Vision Systems

There are several ways vision systems are applied -- or should be applied. It remains an emerging field with much application work still to be done. All food manufacturing is vulnerable to foreign object contamination -- from the very nature of high-speed processing and the action of Murphy's Law. In other industries, contamination can pose a problem, but only in the food industry can this problem result in an illness or foreign object contaminant that might threaten life.

For this reason the FDA -- and in the meat industry, the USDA -- have strict laws to prevent any form of contamination. Some involve laboratory tests, and others involve direct or indirect observation. In this latter area, there are several tools available to help. One is the use of various types of metal detectors which can detect, tie into a reject mechanism, and discard metal-containing products. How does metal get into a food? As production equipment continually operates, there are opportunities for screws, bolts, washers, and even metal filings caused by line repairs, to accidentally get into the food. Almost all food plants have numerous types of metal detectors for ferrous, non-ferrous and stainless steel. For the most part these work fairly well.

When it comes to things like cherry pits, and other non-metal physical contaminants, some plants can effectively use x-ray systems to inspect incoming ingredients and the finished product at various places in production. Most recently, on-line vision systems have been used to detect quality defects and packaging errors. Where the proper shape, size and distribution of nuts, chocolate pieces or fruits, for example are important for total quality and yield control, vision systems can be extremely helpful. They can also be used to make sure the proper product gets into the proper package when there are many rapid product changeovers. The most interesting application of vision systems, is where they are tied into robotics.

Robotics

There are segments of the baking industry where there are intense labor requirements for the handling of products such as cookies. Where one production line can be dedicated to a single product, mechanization or automation might be feasible. However, in this era of flexible production lines, one line may make as many as 30 or 40 different products in a day. These products are often too different for one technology to automatically handle the wide variety of sizes, shapes and textures. And often the products may not be in perfect registry as they move down the conveyer belt for various reasons.

All these make for difficult automation. However, by using people to do these functions manually, even with frequent job rotation, there is the strong possibility of repetitive motion injuries. Some companies have invested significant amounts of research dollars to solve the problem -- and while underway, received some substantial OSHA fines. The need is there to solve this problem in a very cost effective way, ensure quality and be operator-friendly at high production rates.

Some European companies have recently tied together vision systems with flexible robotics handling, to find, pick and place cookies, and even do the sandwiching step where two halves must be placed together. These systems are comparatively new, and there is much room for new adaptations and applications. The effective solution to these types of problems can best be attacked through strategic alliances, with multiple partners bringing various technologies together with industry involvement to be sure all the product, regulatory, people and production requirements are considered. A few such partnerships have been formed with excellent results, but there is far more still to do. With the proper Team and approaches, it can be a win-win scenario for the vendors as well as the food companies.

Next Previous Contents