Machine Vision and Web Inspection
Industrial Bakery Increases Throughput, Lowers Errors with Zebra Technologies Machine Vision
Z 36
ebra Technologies Corporation announced that an industrial bakery has secured lower error rates and higher throughput of goods with a modern machine vision solution using Zebra’s Aurora Design Assistant machine vision software. The bakery can now inspect its full range of breads using a single machine vision solution and carry out effi cient, automated picking with a robotic grip handling between 25 and 30 packages per minute, without damaging bread or packaging. It is estimated that the new solution has secured a 75 percent cost saving compared to traditional camera and lighting inspection approaches. The industrial bakery approached KINE, a Finnish headquartered provider of turnkey robotics solutions for the food and beverage, logistics, semiconductor and other manufacturing industries. Together with OEM Finland Oy, a Zebra registered industrial automation system integrator and an advanced machine vision specialisation partner, they were tasked with developing a solution that
September 2024
Powerful machine vision software solves complex packaged food challenges 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 effi cient as irregular bread production sizes and shapes made it diffi cult to determine their location and orientation on the conveyor belt. Transparent plastic packaging also made detection diffi cult with optical sensors due to low contrast levels and partial refl ections. “We decided to leverage 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 bread,” said Kimmo Salonen, chief technology offi cer, KINE.
The new system consists of a programmable logic controller (PLC), robotic grip, 3D time-of-fl ight camera and Aurora Design Assistant software, which has eliminated the need for multiple cameras and lighting and reduced contrast and refl ection problems. “Basic implementation of the vision system took about one day,” says Sami Sinisalo, robotic specialist,
KINE. “Testing, adjusting and fi xing took about 80 hours, including time calibrating the robot. That is a great turnaround and drastically less than what we would typically have to do for a new 3D install without powerful and user-friendly software.” The camera is placed above the conveyor belt with inspection fl owcharts 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 the data 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 fi nished products require powerful machine vision systems to deliver needed outcomes,” says Jason MacDonald, senior account manager, Machine Vision EMEA, Zebra Technologies. “Zebra’s Aurora machine vision software is moving industries forward and overcoming the problems of legacy systems faced by customers and machine builders.”
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