Partner sought for robot implementations within a food company

Short summary An Italian innovative SME specialised in machine vision solutions for the food industry is looking for a partner to implement robots that, guided by vision systems provided by them, pick up objects moving on conveyor belts. The complete system will be adopted by a client of the Italian company after a feasibility study, so a technology cooperation agreement is sought.

Full description Companies in the food industry need to operate a quality control and selection of the products, discarding the faulty elements: this operation can be done inserting a machine vision system in the automated line. The Italian SME designs and developes machine vision systems for quality control in many industries and has strong experience working with food manufacturers. It is looking for a partner manufacturing robots to be implemented in the customer's conveyor belts, for the quality control of the final food product. The lines to be set up at the customer's premises have a maximum width of 1200 mm and travel at a maximum speed of approximately 13 metres per minute. These lines transport objects with a minimum size (diameter) of 48 mm and a maximum of 66 mm and weight ranging from 50 g to 150 g. The objects are arranged on a single layer, but in an irregular manner. In fact, the distance between one object and another can vary from 0 to 10 mm, and each object can be surrounded by a variable number of other objects, each one more or less close to the others. The Italian company vision system will select, based on various criteria, the items to be picked from the stream and will transmit the position of the items to be picked up by the robots. The items to be picked up will be a small percentage of those moving on the belt, i.e. most of the items on the belt will not be picked up by the robots.

Advantages and innovations The system that will be implemented (machine vision plus robot) will replace the manual work of several people and the innovation lies in the fact that both the machine vision system (owned by the Italian company) and the robotics part (of the partner they are looking for) will have to deal with objects of ever-changing appearance and consistency.

Technical Specification or Expertise Sought The company should be familiar with implementing delta robots that can be equipped with grippers suitable for gripping objects of varying size and consistency. The company must be able to follow the entire mechanical and electrical implementation of the robots and vision system components (supplied by the Italian SME), including the construction and installation of the mechanical structures required to support all parts above the customer's conveyor belts.

Contact / source: NEXT EEN Widgets (europa.eu)