Page 39 - Food & Drink Magazine April 2020

manufacturer. The robot worked independently to pack vanilla cream bags into cartons, but also formed part of a network that includes a carton erector, a carton sealer, and a filling machine. “This is one of the real benefits of cobots – they can work alongside workers and form part of your factory process.”
Collaborative robots are also ideal for hygienic food processing environments, where it can operate around the clock during seasonal periods of high production and can be easily redeployed to new applications as needed, helping local farmers reach their production goals faster.
A LOCAL SUCCESS STORY
Developed by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in partnership with UR, Harvey, a robotic harvester combines state-of-the-art robotic vision and manipulation techniques to identify and harvest capsicums.
Harvesting labour in Australia ranges from 20-40 per cent of operational farming costs and this combined with a shortage of skilled labour can result in some of the crops not being harvested.
In recent trails, Harvey used images from a camera-in-hand system to locate the fruit. A motion-planning algorithm was used to command a novel multi-mode harvesting tool to detach the fruit. Results show a success rate of 76.5 per cent – a significant improvement when compared to the state-of-the- art, which achieved 33 per cent in a similar scenario. Harvey also achieved an average pick time of 20 seconds for this field trial compared to 106 seconds by its predecessor.
This year, QUT will further develop Harvey as part of its involvement in the new Future of Food Systems Cooperative Research Centre backed by $35m in Australian government funding over 10 years, and
$149.6m in cash and in-kind funds from more than
50 participants.
ACCESSIBLE COBOTS
According to Adams, UR has recently begun to offer a financial services leasing programme for the robots, which could prove to be a lifeline for producers who are
makes it easy to upgrade existing cobots, add additional units or test cobots for the first time – and equips users to maximise productivity, quality and profitability, without increasing costs or cash outlay,” Adams says.
Adams believes the time has come to think more laterally about agriculture,
“ This is one of the real benefits of cobots – they can work alongside workers and form part of your factory process.”
rebuilding their business.
“We are levelling the playing
field by enabling all manufacturers to immediately put cobots to work without an upfront capital investment. UR Financial Services offers a fast, low-risk and financially friendly model to accelerate automation. The partnership
and that robotics is the revolutionary new technology that can change the way
we think about producing and packaging food. ✷
This article was first published in stablemate publication PKN Packaging News’ March/April 2020 issue.
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www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au | April 2020 | Food&Drink business | 39