FEATURE Machine visionī
Machine vision solution increases bakery throughput with fewer errors
Powerful machine vision software solves complex packaged food Z
ebra Technologies announced that an industrial bakery has secured lower error rates and higher throughput of goods with a modern machine vision solution using the Zebra Aurora Design Assistant machine vision software. The bakery now inspects its full range of breads using a single machine vision solution, and carries out efficient, automated picking with a robotic grip handling between 25 and 30 packages per minute, without damaging bread or packaging. It’s estimated that the new solution has secured a 75% cost saving compared to traditional camera and lighting inspection methods.
A solution for all challenges The industrial bakery approached KINE, Finland-headquartered provider of turnkey robotics solutions for the food and beverage, logistics, semiconductor and other manufacturing industries. Together with OEM Finland, a Zebra- registered industrial automation system integrator and advanced machine vision specialist, KINE was tasked with developing a solution that would overcome several challenges: A manual process was being used
to remove and deposit bags of bread loaves and rolls, which was potentially error-prone and less efficient as irregular bread production sizes and shapes made it difficult to determine their location and orientation on the conveyor belt. Transparent plastic packaging also made detection difficult with optical sensors due to low contrast levels and partial reflections. “We decided to use Zebra’s Aurora Design Assistant machine-vision software for its versatile, powerful capabilities that provide the robustness and integration needed to visually inspect the variations in packaged
34 July/August 2024 | Automation
bread,” said Kimmo Salonen, Chief Technology Officer of KINE. The system consists of a program- mable logic controller (PLC), robotic grip, 3D time-of-flight camera and Aurora Design Assistant software, which don’t need multiple cameras and lighting to operate, and don’t suffer from reduced contrast and reflections. “Basic implementation of the vision system took about one day,” said Sami Sinisalo, Robotic Specialist at KINE. “Testing, adjusting and fixing took about 80 hours, including the time to calibrate the robot. That’s a great turnaround and drastically less than what we’d typically have to do for a new 3D install, without powerful and user-friendly software.”
Solution operation
The camera is placed above the conveyor belt, with inspection
flowcharts created in Aurora Design Assistant. The camera takes up to 30 frames per second, recording the bread surfaces as a point cloud with over 300,000 XYZ coordinates. The data is sent to Aurora Design Assistant which converts it into a depth map for analysis, using 2D vision tools to determine grip points for the robot. “Challenging manufacturing
environments with high levels of compliance and wide variations in components and finished products require powerful machine vision systems to deliver needed outcomes,” said Jason MacDonald, Senior Account Manager, Machine Vision EMEA, Zebra Technologies. “Zebra’s high- performing Aurora machine vision software is moving industries forward and overcoming the problems of legacy systems faced by customers and machine builders.”
automationmagazine.co.uk
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