SINTEF researchers are developing Gribbot, a fully functional robot designed to automate the process of extracting breast fillets from chickens, a task normally performed by humans. "Our aim is to automate absolutely everything we can think of on the food production line," says SINTEF researcher Ekrem Misimi. He says the robot should make Norwegian food production more sustainable, both in terms of profitability and utilization of raw materials. "We at SINTEF are the only specialists in Norway to have focused on solving these kinds of problems for the food industry," Misimi says.
Gribbot has a hand for grasping, specially developed fingers, and a three-dimensional vision system based on the Microsoft Kinect 2. The researchers also developed Gribbot's algorithm, which enables it to extract breast fillets as well as a human.
Misimi notes the robot's camera and the robot itself must have the same vocabulary. "In other words, the robot's coordinate system must be able to understand the coordinates identified by the machine vision," he says.
Gribbot was developed as part of a larger project called CYCLE, which aims to make Norwegian food production more profitable, more environmentally friendly, and more efficient. "Automating this work will speed up production and make it more efficient," Misimi says.
From SINTEF
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