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Building “Smart” Deboning Systems
In an effort to address the poultry industry’s challenge to
automate the deboning process, Georgia Tech researchers are developing
a “smart” deboning system. The system uses computer vision
and other sensing technologies to recognize and react to size and shape
differences of a chicken carcass in order to perform precision cuts
that optimize yield (the amount of meat removed from the bone) while
reducing the risk of bone fragments in finished product.
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Debao Zhou, postdoctoral fellow, is working on the design of
the “Smart” Deboning System, which employs a 3-degree-of-freedom
device that is capable of adapting to internal bird anatomy while
compensating for any body deformations.
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Deboned chicken,
especially breast meat (commonly the highest valued portion of the
carcass), is one of the fastest growing segments of
the poultry industry. This increased demand is driving the need for
automation as processors seek to increase product safety and quality
and reduce the labor demands of current manual processing operations.
“Currently, no cutting systems are available with the capability
to adapt to changes in bird size and body deformation,” says
Gary McMurray, senior research engineer and project director. “By
studying the anatomic structure of the chicken shoulder, we were able
to identify the cutting locations and develop a prototype intelligent
or ‘smart’ device.”
The smart deboner is comprised
of a vision system, a cone line, and a cutting system. The vision
system identifies the correct starting
position for the cut and based on the size of the bird, a nominal
cutting trajectory. A standard cone line moves the bird through the
work cell.
The cutting system employs a 3-degree-of-freedom device that is capable
of adapting to the internal bird anatomy while compensating for any
body deformations. Thus, as the knife moves along the cutting path
for each bird, the computer automatically adjusts the path in response
to the particular geometry of the bird using force feedback to perform
a near optimal cut.
“The concept is to use the flexibility of the robot to allow
the system to automatically compensate for the natural size variations
of the
bird and thus eliminate the need for any sorting based on weight,” explains
McMurray. The elimination of weighing and sorting systems for process
control could also have a big impact on the industry as far as cost
savings and minimizing floor space.
Researchers are currently completing
a prototype for testing and evaluation of the cutting concept. According
to McMurray, the project team has
conducted extensive testing and modeling to support the development
of the prototype system. A thorough kinematic analysis of various
cutting paths for the shoulder cut has been performed in order to select
the
best cutting motion for the automation. Mathematical models are being
developed to study the cutting process and understand the impact
of the material properties, sharpness of the blade, cutting velocity,
and angle of the cut on the cutting force.
Researchers are now completing
initial tests on a first-generation prototype system and are looking
forward to performing cutting experiments
beginning in early summer 2007. These tests will allow researchers
to verify their mathematical models as well as demonstrate the viability
of the concept. Then in the winter of 2008, the team will begin testing
its complete model-based control algorithms.
Although the smart deboner
has been designed with poultry in mind, McMurray says it can easily
be used to perform deboning operations
in other meat products, such as beef, fish, pork, and turkey, all
of which have inherently similar natural variability to poultry products.
Ultimately, researchers anticipate that the concept could be used
on new machines or retrofitted to existing machines, adding more
capability
to adapt to product variability and thereby improving yield.
“As
the industry moves to higher throughputs and increased focus on product
quality, the need to automate the cutting tasks increases.
Our work is very unique in the world as it is very analytically based
and it seeks to leverage off emerging analytical tools. The potential
impact of this work on the poultry and meat industries is huge. Not
only will this help to move away from labor-intensive and challenging
cutting tasks, but it will also help to improve yield and product quality,” says
McMurray.
Photography by Steven Thomas, GTRI.
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