Page 38 - Food & Drink Magazine April 2020

Rebuilding Australia with robots
same precision. Cobots have been deployed across a range of industries and have become increasingly common in manufacturing environments.
“A big benefit UR cobots hold in this rebuilding process is that they provides manufacturers and industry with the ability to act fast, increase productivity, profits and offer higher quality products,” Darrell Adams, head of SEAO at UR, says.
Cobots can be programmed, operated, and maintained
by existing employees, regardless of the team’s previous robotics experience.
ACCELERATING FOOD PRODUCTION PROCESSES As far as the agriculture industry is concerned, UR believes Australian farmers need all the help they can get. With increasing interest in automated agriculture, cobots can offer an effective solution. According to a recent report, the market for agricultural robots is expected to reach $35bn within the next five years.
“Cobots can prove their agricultural worth by assisting producers in getting their businesses back up and running faster and more efficiently,” Adams says.
He notes that UR cobots can be applied to a number of requirements within the agriculture and food processing sector. Robots are used in planting, seeding, fertilising, irrigation, weeding, thinning, pruning, harvesting, and milking applications.
The company prides itself on the cobot’s ability to handle delicate agricultural processes and products. Such an example can be found in the dairy industry, where a UR robot
arm mounted to a small pallet jack is used to disinfect and
milk cows. This cuts labour costs and time taken to complete the job. The robot occupies no more space than a human milker and doesn’t require any safety caging.
Another application where cobots can be implemented is in the packaging of goods that are sent to market. Adams notes one case study of a UR10 robot, installed at a food
Collaborative robots can play a part in rebuilding the economy in the wake of the destructive bushfires.
WITH an estimated 12.35 million acres of land and 2500 homes and businesses destroyed in the catastrophic fires this summer, Australia is now faced with the arduous task of rebuilding the country.
While this might seem like an insurmountable task, the fires also bring new opportunities to the adjacent industries involved in helping rebuild the homes, buildings, and farmland that were lost, giving an opportunity to jumpstart the economy.
This is particularly true in agriculture, which accounted for 14 per cent of the total land area that was burned by the bushfires. By mid-January, an estimated 820,000 hectares of agricultural land had been
destroyed across South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.
RISING FROM THE ASHES
Collaborative robot manufacturer Universal Robots (UR) believes that while this tragic event has left a trail of destruction, companies may be able to speed up the process of rebuilding by implementing technological advancements across the spectrum.
With applications ranging from packaging and palletising, assembly, welding, and product handling, UR cobots can tackle those tedious tasks that require superhuman abilities to repeat the same movement over and over again for many hours with exactly the
ABOVE: Harvey is a type of robotic harvester developed by QUT and Universal Robots. Photo courtesy Australian Centre for Robotic Vision/QUT
38 | Food&Drink business | April 2020 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au
ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION