Robot has vision to win food processing award

The project combines multi-axis robotics, 3D vision technology and development and integration expertise to automate baked product decoration. This is a process that was previously done manually because of the non-uniform shape of baked goods.

The three companies involved were Mitsubishi Electric, whose robot technology has already won worldwide recognition, Scorpion Vision who provided a powerful 3D machine vision system and Quasar Automation, renowned for creating solutions to the most challenging applications in food manufacturing.

Looking at the technicalities of the winning baked product icing system, Jeremy Shinton of Mitsubishi explains: "There is a persistent problem with food products in general and baked goods in particular with the non-uniform shape of the finished product. This makes applying any kind of final embellishment, such as piped icing or other forms of decorative solutions in an accurate way, very much a manual task.

"Mitsubishi Electric and Scorpion Vision have teamed up with Quasar Automation to create a decorative depositing method that takes into account the irregular shapes but maintains the depositor at a constant height above the work piece. With such accuracy the decorative icing is applied in a repeatable way. This allows the optimum time for the icing to set, often a critical issue in real-world production processes."