Robot Integration Into Food Manufacturing: Benefits And Challenges

Industrial and collaborative robots in the food industry are increasingly being deployed in primary processing and secondary processing applications. Robotic automation has pervaded an incredibly diverse range of industries all over the globe – the food processing industry is one of the final frontiers of robotic automation. Both industrial and collaborative robots can be used throughout the entire food supply chain. Historically though, food processing has been the most difficult to automate. But recent technological advances are overcoming these obstacles.

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Food manufacturing has grown into rather complex processes involving preparing, cooking, sorting, packaging and palletizing. Industrial robots are increasingly being integrated in order to save time and space, as well as improving cleanliness and safety.

Food manufacturing robots are commonly used in the dispensing, feed placement, cutting, packaging or casing of food, pick and placing products into containers, and sorting. Newer developments also allow for order picking, where an employee or customer is able to place an order electronically, and the food robot automatically fills that specific order.For the packaging of food items, where speed, consistency or high levels of repetition are concerned, the food robots almost always win over humans in terms of efficiency.

Food manufacturing robots are commonly used in the dispensing, feed placement, cutting, packaging or casing of food, pick and placing products into containers, and sorting. Newer developments also allow for order picking, where an employee or customer is able to place an order electronically, and the food robot automatically fills that specific order

Robots are equipped with intelligent vision systems allowing the very specific placement of products on a belt to be done with incredible accuracy. Vision system robots are also utilized in sorting by color, shape or size.