Modeling the Chicken
Written By Colin Usher and Wayne Daley
Photography by Steven Thomas
 Wiley Holcombe, GTRI principal research engineer, uses the FARO Arm to generate a three-dimensional model of a chicken carcass for import into a CAD program. |
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The design of most devices for handling poultry requires a “feel” for the size and shape of the product. Most modern poultry processing equipment is designed to adjust the equipment to compensate for variability in the size and shape of birds. However, no single design is able to handle the entire product population accurately, which directly results in yield loss or equipment malfunction based on the application. A better understanding of this variability could better support equipment design efforts.
The Georgia Tech Research Institute’s Food Processing Technology Division recently acquired a traditional technology known as the FARO Arm but for a non-traditional application. The FARO Arm is a device that allows for reverse engineering of manufactured product by rapidly verifying or scanning parts with high accuracy. A laser scanning device allows a user to quickly scan a product and generate a SolidWorks or AutoCad compliant model literally in minutes. The resulting scans are accurate within one-thousandth of an inch. This capability allows a user to scan in a high number of products in a relatively short period of time and allows for easy comparison with the original design. Researchers will use the FARO Arm to generate models of actual chicken carcasses to import into their preferred CAD programs. These models can then be used to evaluate the potential performance of existing equipment designs or to support the design of prototypes, by allowing the designers to verify the operation of these designs before any hardware is manufactured.
Data from the FARO Arm was recently used to help develop dimensional relationships on chicken carcasses which were used to establish the initial insertion point of a robotic-controlled blade in the development of an intelligent deboning system. Ready access to the FARO Arm will streamline the further development of these approaches as the requirements for the next generation of equipment design are considered. Researchers are currently planning to expand their database of scanned poultry product, which will, in turn, expand these potential uses and applications. The models generated could also be imported into existing equipment designs to test the “fit” of the product to the equipment and establish the appropriate modifications to more closely align the capability of the equipment and the requirements
of the product.
Using this technology, a large number of chickens can be scanned, allowing designers to use multiple models that represent the actual variability that they might expect to see in the processing environment. These models can then be imported individually into the equipment or prototype models and studied to ensure that the designs are likely to perform at desired levels. It is even possible to scan sets of birds from particular processing plants to establish what the optimal settings should be for a particular processing plant or sequence of operations.
This new capability for rapidly scanning product has many possible future uses. Equipment designers can benefit from the ability to import actual chicken models into their equipment designs; processing plants can scan chicken from different farms, or even during different seasons, to better classify the variability in the shape and size of the chicken coming into the plant; and classifying the variability of product coming into a plant can help the production managers to have a better understanding of how they need to adjust their equipment in order to maximize yield. As we look to the future, the ability of new equipment designs to robustly accommodate the product being handled will be key to continuing to produce a quality product at a reasonable cost. Devices such as the FARO Arm will play a role in realizing this future.
Colin Usher is a research scientist in the Georgia Tech Research Institute’s Food Processing Technology Division. His areas of expertise are software development, intelligent systems, computer imaging, robotics, and automation technologies. He can be contacted by email at colin.usher@gtri.gatech.edu.
Wayne Daley is the associate division chief of the Georgia Tech Research Institute’s Food Processing Technology Division. His areas of expertise are computer vision and intelligent systems. He can be contacted by email at wayne.daley@gtri.gatech.edu.