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

Tags:

• ABB
• robots
• robotics
• robomotion
• unilever
• high
• speed
• picking
• packing
• peperami
• salami
• snacks
• sausages
• IRB
• 340
• 360
• FlexPicker

[AClarke2007]

What if two pickers want to pick up the same salami at the same time?

Who makes the decision?

[ABBRobotics]

@AClarke2007 The decision is made by the PickMaster 3 software. It is handing out the tasks to the robots

[squishfaceofsaryrn]

but can it unsnap a womans bra with one arm?

[ABBRobotics]

@squishfaceofsaryrn Yes it can :-)

[ABBRobotics]

@JOHNINCOLUMBUS Even Mexicans do not want to do this work. This installation is in Germany where there are not so many Mexicans :-)

[Spoif]

Seems a profligate method of getting "nearly" aligned, to aligned.

[CxC2007]

this is soo cool

[GTechno13]

Seems like the center conveyor should stay moving so there isn't a big pause. The bots should have no trouble setting onto a moving target.

[kongehund]

But will it blend?

[MrSammo1]

Our owners don't need us any more.

[Afterthehunt007]

@ABBRobotics nice machine does ABB make a MAP machine for jerky that wont break the bank? I have looked into theremoforming rollstock machines (which produces a nice package and I could use it in a wide range of applications (jerky and vacuum sealed custom meats))the problem.... in my mind..... a high mill plastic is used for jerky to prevent puncture but the heated seal is very difficult to open. So for jerky a zipper to MAP bag is more customer friendly but the machine has fewer applications.

[PooPusher007]

you wouldnt want to walk past it with a boner