Application of sorting robot in the food and beverage industry

Posted by sere on March 11th, 2021

The picking operation is carried out by robots for product selection. If there are many varieties and different shapes, the sorting robot needs to be equipped with an image recognition system and a multi-function manipulator. Every time the robot reaches a kind of item pallet, the image recognition system can "see "The shape of the article is picked up by the corresponding manipulator, and then placed on the matching tray.

   The picking operation is carried out by robots for product selection. If there are many varieties and different shapes, the sorting robot needs to be equipped with an image recognition system and a multi-function manipulator. Every time the robot reaches a kind of item pallet, the image recognition system can "see "The shape of the article is picked up by the corresponding manipulator, and then placed on the matching tray.

  At present, the application of picking and sorting robots in the food and beverage industry is gradually increasing, mainly in the subsequent packaging, such as small particles of chocolate, candies, or boxed or bagged food and beverages, quickly grabbing and placing them on the designated sorting transmission In a belt or a box, this robot is not only as dexterous as human hands, but also has sufficient judgment ability. In the future, in an empty warehouse, one robot will send the shelves to the packing table, and by accurately identifying the goods, sort out the required goods, and pack them on the conveyor belt. The sorting robot has formed a prototype. Once these intelligent sorting robots are applied to the packaging industry, it will greatly improve the efficiency of warehouse management and reduce labor costs. It will take some time for sorting robots to enter the market. In the short term, packaging and picking will inevitably exist in the form of automation and manual assistance.

   Currently, sorting robots are generally based on parallel robots, also known as spider-hand robots, which are usually four-axis and six-axis parallel robots.

  In the food and beverage industry, the sorting action generally takes efficiency as the first requirement, and the degree of difficulty is the same as packaging. It is necessary to accurately place the scattered items in the packaging bag or box, which not only tests the flexibility of the robot And accuracy, and requires the robot to have vision and computable functions.

    Product packaging generally has many forms. According to the shape, material, weight and cleanliness requirements of the object, the packaging process is more complicated. At present, there are mainly the following types of robots for packaging this process. Bagging robot: The bagging robot is a fixed rotary machine base, and the body can rotate 360 ​​degrees. The manipulator completes the conveying, opening, measuring, filling, sewing and stacking of the bags. This is a highly intelligent packaging robot. Packing robot: similar to a bagging robot, the packing of general metal and glass packaging containers is completed by a rigid packing robot. There are two types of mechanical and air-suction grabbing for packing (items) in boxes. It can be moved as a whole. Grab or absorb the package, and then send it to the package box or pallet at the designated location. It has the function of automatic adjustment of direction and position, which can realize no unloading and direction adjustment without a box (pallet). This type of robot is a relatively mature robot with a wide range of applications. Such as beverages, beer, etc. Filling robot: This is a robot that performs measurement, capping, capping (capping) and identification after the packaging container is filled with liquid materials. It has the functions of no bottle no feeding, no cap no feeding, broken bottle alarm and automatic rejection. In the past, many of our liquid material fillings were mainly installed on the production line with the partial functions of this robot, one by one, but now, this kind of robot has been directly configured at the back of the material production host to realize its automatic filling. Filling robots are divided into soft packaging and hard packaging. The analysis here is a hard packaging (bottling) filling robot. Packaging and conveying robot: This kind of robot in the packaging industry mainly refers to the robot used for plastic bottle packaging and conveying. It uses power and special components to realize the conveying of the bottle body (empty bottle), and quickly arrange the individual packaging bottles in the bottle barrel. , And then give a specific (direction, magnitude) force. Make the bottle body pass through the parabola line accurately in the air to reach the filling workpiece. This robot has changed the traditional bottle conveying mechanism. The conveying speed is accelerated and the conveying space is reduced. It is a new concept packaging robot. It realizes its conveying operation by means of aerodynamics and special mechanical components.