ABB Robotics - Picking and packing salami snacks

High-speed ABB FlexPicker robots equipped with specially developed
grippers are making sure that Peperami salamis are packaged at the highest
cycle rates at Unilever's plant in Ansbach, Germany.

The robots are fitted with triple grippers which are able to pick up three randomly positioned salami snacks one after the other from a conveyor belt in a one step process, and place them individually in a rollstock machine.
The positioning and location data required comes from an upstream image processing system which is positioned to capture the information on the individual sausages and pass it on to a master computer.

Unilever commissioned ABB Robotics partner, robomotion GmbH from
Stuttgart, to plan and design the fully automated solution; and install
and commission the entire system at Unilever within 10 days. "This
high-speed technology is not only of interest in the foodstuffs sector, as
it can be used anywhere where small items have to be handled at high
speeds" says Andreas Wolf, a director of robomotion.

Unilever's chief engineer, Carim Gad, concludes "With the new system,
we're running the packaging machine at full capacity, giving us a
performance increase of up to 25 percent compared with manual loading. The ability to cover peak loads is of particular interest.

For example, in the run-up to the Football World Cup, special production shifts were operating at the weekend. This alone gave us a competitive edge, enabling us to deliver Peperamis to our customers on schedule".

• Category

  Science & Technology

[iRouRoui]

I wonder what would happend if I push that red big button at 2:10

[ABBRobotics]

I think it changes the channel on the TV screen :-)

[saizai]

Why is there a pause time before the belt advances eg 1:05, 1:19? You'd save 2 seconds per pickup run if the belt advances *while* the picker gets the next set, rather than picking it up, noticing that the placement spot is blocked, and *then* advancing the belt.

[ABBRobotics]

@saizai Yes it can also work as you suggest, but the set up in the movie is currently meeting the production demand that Unilever needs.

[squishfaceofsaryrn]

but can it unsnap a womans bra with one arm?

[ABBRobotics]

Yes it can :-)

[TbiRobotics]

Very good

[Nastyman9]

I love how the robots are so quick that they have to wait for the line to move before continuing

[mat price]

so this is y there are no jobs lol

[Gary Cai]

I don't really get it. Why not order the salami into a proper grid, then just wrap them up row by row, like what other factories do?

[ak3834]

its emergency stop button...

[cyborg4r]

You need to consider that the limiting factor might be the machine that is downstream in the line, eg: the sealer maybe uses a cutter that does need the pause in motion. I do think that's the case if you notice at the start of the video how the roll of wrapper film pauses at periodic intervals too.