噴涂機器人設(shè)計【說明書+CAD】,說明書+CAD,噴涂機器人設(shè)計【說明書+CAD】,噴涂,機器人,設(shè)計,說明書,CAD Industrial Robot: An International JournalEmerald Article: The use of robots in the Japanese food industryYoshihiro KusudaArticle information:To cite this document: Yoshihiro Kusuda, (2010),The use of robots in the Japanese food industry, Industrial Robot: An International Journal, Vol. 37 Iss: 6 pp. 503 - 508Permanent link to this document: http:/dx.doi.org/10.1108/01439911011081641Downloaded on: 11-04-2012To copy this document: This document has been downloaded 637 times. Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by DALIAN POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITYFor Authors: If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service. Information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Additional help for authors is available for Emerald subscribers. Please visit for more information.About Emerald With over forty years experience, Emerald Group Publishing is a leading independent publisher of global research with impact in business, society, public policy and education. In total, Emerald publishes over 275 journals and more than 130 book series, as well as an extensive range of online products and services. Emerald is both COUNTER 3 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.*Related content and download information correct at time of download.Feature articleThe use of robots in the Japanese food industryYoshihiro KusudaAssociate Editor,Industrial RobotAbstractPurpose The purpose of this paper is to review the use of robots in the Japanese food industry, today and tomorrow.Design/methodology/approach This paper is based on research papers, exhibitions, press releases and interviews.Findings The paper finds that food palletizing and packaging are the popular applications at present. Food processing and handling are emerging.Agricultural and farming applications are yet to come in spite of intensive on-going R&D efforts.Originality/value This paper presents issues to overcome for the robotization of the industry in the future.Keywords Food industry, Robotics, Japan, User studiesPaper type Research paper1. IntroductionJapan is a country the same size as the state of California, USA,with a population of 130 million condensed into the small area.They consume many kinds of food, ranging over authenticJapaneseandallkindsofethnicfoods.Thefoodindustryplaysasignificant role in the Japanese economy. As it uses a lot ofhumanworkers,theanticipatedlaborshortageinthefuturewillbe a big problem. However, use of robots in the Japanese foodindustry is currently far behind in comparison with EU,accounting only around 1 percent of all robot applications.Thereremainalotofissuestoovercome.Thispaperpresentsanoverview of current use of robots in the Japanese food industryand on-going R&D efforts for the future.2. Agriculture and farmingJapan consists of 7,000 islands both large and small which aremostly mountainous and hilly. Three quarter of the land is notsuitable for cultivation. As 60 percent of the consumed food isimported from overseas, the food self-sufficiency ratio is theworst among major countries in the world. In an attempt tosecure stable food supply capability, the Ministry ofAgriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) of the Japanesegovernment is trying to boost up domestic agriculturalproduction. There is another big problem of labor shortage.Work force for agriculture, which was 17.6 million in 1990, willbe 7.25 million in 2020. And Japan is the most rapidly agingcountry in the world. The aged work force over 65 years of agewill increase to 35 percent in 2020 from 20 percent in 1990.Automation of farming is an absolute must for the future, but itis no easy task. Thereare manysmall farmerswho cannot makea huge investment for modernization and big scale farming isnot available. Nevertheless, in preparation for the farming forthe future, the National Agriculture and Food ResearchOrganization (NARO), a semi-governmental organizationfunded by MAFF and private sector organizations, has beentackling the problem of how to modernize Japanese agricultureand food industry. The Bio-oriented Technology ResearchAdvancement Institution (BRAIN) and other researchinstitutions of NARO, are conducting research on the next-generationagricultureemployingthestate-of-the-arttechnology, such as robotics, information technology,navigation, etc. in light of commercialization for the future.Development of robotic tractors started even 20 years ago.BRAIN developed a autonomous robotic tractor (Figure 1).Itusesacommercial32HPtractorasaplatformandconsistsofanavigation system, a main controller, a vehicle controller and avehiclecontrolsystem.For thenavigationsystem,threeoptionsare available. One of an optical surveying method, a differentialGPS and electromagnetic guidance can be selected to meet theworking condition. A computer controls steering mechanism,forward/backward movement, changing of speed, up and downof work machine, right and left brakes and engine stop.The totally unmanned operation is as good as a human work interms of work efficiency and accuracy.TheNationalAgricultureResearchCenter(NARC)of NAROis developing a robotic rice transplanting machine. Baby riceplants are to be transplanted into water-filled paddy field.As pinpointing precision of several centimeter is required, anavigation system using RTK-GPS (Real-Time KinematicGPS) is used. A on-board computer controls steeringmechanism, gear change, a work machine clutch, workmachine up and down, right and left brakes, engine stop. Themachine, based on a conventional rice-planting device,acquires position information by RTK-GPS and uses aposture sensor which combines a piezo-electric gyro and aslant sensor. It can measure roll and pitch angles withouttime-delay by compensating delayed reaction of a slant sensorwith a piezo-electric gyro. It can perform rice transplanting for30 acre paddy field in 60 minutes.The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available Robot: An International Journal37/6 (2010) 503508q Emerald Group Publishing Limited ISSN 0143-991XDOI 10.1108/01439911011081641503Currently around 3,000 chemical spraying robots are in use asa safeguard against poisonous chemicals. BRAIN developed an“unmanned sprayer for orchards” Yanmar has been marketingsince1993.Theunmannedsprayerisguidedbyelectro-magneticinductionwireinstalledonthebedoforchards.Forgreen-housesseveral spray robot models are on the market which also useguided wire technology.To get rid of weeds in water filled paddy fields is demandinglabor. A weeding robot (Figure 2) has been developed byGifu Information Technology Institute that moves around ina paddy field to get rid of weeds. As use of fuel engine isnot favored because of ecological issues, electric drive isintroduced. Rice plants are planted regularly in a straight linewith a rice-transplanting machine with separation distance ofabout 300mm between lines. It has to travel in avoidingcollision against rice plants without damaging them. Themachine stirs the soil, and gives pressure on the soil to suppressweed outbreak. It wades at a speed 450mm/seconds. Fornavigation a RTK-GPS is used. Fuji Heavy Industries ismarketing “a mowing robot” based on a commercial mowingmachine.TheunmannedmachinerunsbymeansofRTK-GPSandageomagneticsensor.Itisequippedwithdeviceslikesafetysystems such as obstacle avoidance, setting of aworkingareabymetal-tags under ground, emergency stop by remote controland touch sensors.Development of manipulator based robots for farmingstarted about 20 years ago.BRAIN and SI Seiko jointly developed a strawberryharvesting robot (Figure 3). Because of difficulty of sensingandaccessing,100percentunmannedharvesting isimpossible.It uses “human-robot collaboration” strategy where robotsharvest at night as many strawberries as it can do, and the nextday-timehumanworkersharvestleft-overstrawberries.Avisualsensor consists of three color cameras and five LEDillumination lights with polarizing filter. Pictures taken by theright and left cameras are processed to identify harvest-readyred-ripe strawberries and the target strawberry location ismeasured by a stereo imaging system. As the harvesting robotoperates at night when lighting environment is stable, accuratedecision on harvest-ready strawberry is available. A harvestinghandconsistsofasuctionwallandgrippingfingerswithacuttereither of which moves back and forth independently. First, avision sensor and the hand come close to the strawberry, thesuction wall pull the strawberry and then the hand cut off thestrawberry at thetwig.The harvestedstrawberries are placed ina tray one by one. The machine can harvest strawberries at aspeed of 9-12 seconds per one.Tomato production is the biggest among cultivatedvegetables in Japan. BRAIN has been developing a tomatoharvesting robot for tomatoes cultivated in green houses.The robot consists of a visual sensor, a manipulator and a handandtravelsalongapiperail.Forthemanipulatoracommerciallyavailable 6 axis articulated robot is used. The hand has fourfingerstograspandharvestbyopen/closemovement.Itcatchesa tomato, twists to pick it off from a twig. For harvesting therobotlooksatthemirrorreflectioncausedbythesalientportionofthetomatosurfacewhichispresentedwhitewhenilluminatedby light. Halogen lamp irradiates the neighborhood of objecttomato, and the picture taken by two CCD camera is image-processed to be separated from the background, and then thecenter point of the tomato is determined. At present the robotsuccessfully harvest around 50-70 percent of the tomato inquestion if more than half of an image of a tomato is visible.The time interval needed from recognition to harvest is about15seconds.Theresearchanddevelopmentofharvestingrobotsfor tomatoes or mandarin oranges has been conducted byOkayama and other universities, too.Grafting is to put two or more plants together at the crosssections of the plants to form a single plant body by gluing.BRAIN/Izeki developed and commercialized an automaticgrafting robots. The technology establishes itself as a stablemethod to produce high quality vegetables and is applied toaround 60 percent of cucumbers, watermelons, eggplants andtomatoes. A grafting robot is executed in two versions, one isfull-automatic and the other semi-automatic. With the semi-automaticversion,avineandarootstockaresuppliedmanually,Figure 1 Robotic tractor developed by BRAINFigure 2 Paddy field weeding robotThe use of robots in the Japanese food industryYoshihiro KusudaIndustrial Robot: An International JournalVolume 37 Number 6 2010 503508504cutting, gluing, joining are done by a robot. With automaticversion everything goes automatically including loading of thegrafted plant into a tray. Around 500 grafting robots are in usethe majority of which are semi-automatic.Milking robots are used in a limited number. Around 200Astronauts of Dutch company Lely Industries are used,followed by Swedish VMS, Dutch Galaxy, and Titan.However, the European systems are not yet so popular in theJapanese milking community because of the difference in cattlebreedingsystem.InJapancowsareusuallykeptinstablesunlikeinEuropewherecowsareputtopasturefreely.YaskawaElectricapplied a dual arm robot MOTOMAN-DA20 to milking work.Yaskawa claims that the system can be introduced withoutchanging an existing milking environment.Theplantfactoryisafacilitythataidsthesteadyproductionofhigh-quality vegetables all year round by artificially controllingthe cultivation environment, e.g. light, temperature, humidity,carbon dioxide concentration and culture solution (Figure 4).By controlling the internal environment, plant factories canproduce vegetables two to four times faster than by typicaloutdoorcultivation.Inaddition,multiplecultivationshelvesareused, the mass production of vegetables in a small space isfacilitated. About 50 plant factories currently operate acrossJapan, growing lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, strawberries and soforth. The Japanese government aims to triple the number by2011 by taking various assistance measures. The artificiallyestablished environment could be easy to accept robots. Theplantfactorycouldpaveawaytopopularizeroboticapplicationsin future farming industry. Big corporations of chemicalindustry with expertise in LED and/or photovoltaic panels aregetting involved in the business. Mitsubishi ChemicalIndustries exported the first plant factory in a form of a freightcontainer to Qatar.Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology has beendeveloping a power assist suit specifically aimed at reductionof demanding work of farmers (Figure 5). The suit is based onlight weighted ABS resin frame with high rigidity and equippedFigure 3 Strawberry harvesting robotLEDColour CCD cameraSub-trayPhotoelectric sensorGripperTraySuction device(a)(b)Figure 4 Conceptual drawing of plant factoryMovable typeharvesting robotPackaging robotElevatedsubstrate cultureUtilization of IT & RTstrawberry-harvesting robotDesign of RT greenhouse systemFigure 5 Power assist suit for farmerThe use of robots in the Japanese food industryYoshihiro KusudaIndustrial Robot: An International JournalVolume 37 Number 6 2010 503508505withultrasonicmotorsatbothshoulders,bothelbows,waistandof both knees. Angle and pressure sensors detect the movementof a farming worker to generate assisting force by ultrasonicmotors accordingly. Routine works can bepre-programmed andplayed-back.The currentmodelweighs18kgwhich istoo heavyfor practical use. The teamis trying to reduce the weightto 6kg.For fishery there are micro-processor based automaticmachines which are labeled as “robot”, such as squid fishingrobot that emulates skilled fishermans subtle movements of afishing rod to allure squids to bite a bait. However, real robotapplications in fishery scarce. Oysters are cultivated on shoreto the size of spat, and then transplanted to scallop shells. Theshells are assembled by a wire that passes through holesmade on each shell with a separator between each shell. Thenthe wire is put in the water for oysters to mature. OogaIndustries developed an assembly machine to automate theassembling process. Since the locations of holes drilled in theshells are random, a CCD visual sensor recognizes the holeposition. A 3 axis robot picks up the shell to be put into thewire. Traditionally a skilled worker produces 100-150 wires aday, each having 80 shells. The productivity is increased bytwo to three times.3. Food processing and handlingHandling of finished food products such as picking, packagingand palletizing is the most popular applications of robots inthe food industry.In the past, Japanese robot manufacturers were not active inthe food handling applications. Overseas companies, such asAdept, ABB and Bosch cultivated robotic applications in thefood industry. However, since the Lehman shock, previousmajor market of robots in automotive and electric industry wasgone, the Japanese robot manufacturers are now desperatelylooking for new markets. One of the new direction is theoutbreak of parallel link robots. Fanuc, Kawasaki, Murata andSanmei unveiled new developments and got involved in highspeed pick-and-place applications of small articles. Figure 6showsFanucM-3iA/6Spicksuparetortpouchfromaconveyorand put it into a trey on another conveyor. A built-in visualsensor detects the position and orientation of the pouch on realtime basis.These applicationsweretargeted on rather hard andsolid articles covered with wrapping, such as candies,chocolates, etc. However, new robotic application of handlingsoft and easily broken items in food processing is emerging.At a food machinery exhibition, FOOMA 2010 in Tokyo,visitors saw new applications of soft food stuff handling.Rheon, a leading food making machine manufacturer,exhibited, in addition of its wide spectrum of its foodmaking machines specialized to specific food article, a systemwhere a FANUC430iA robot picks soft half-finished ricecakes and places it in containers coming in on a conveyor.The robot uses a unique gripper of own development thathandles soft and flexible objects. Moreover, the robot changesthe tool and then puts a nut topping on the cake. Rheon saidthat the advantage of using the robot is that not only thecapability of handling soft and easy broken object, but alsoit can undertake secondary process such as topping. Thesystem can process 60 pieces a minute. Baba Iron WorksdemonstrateddexterityofaSUSHIhandlingrobot,composed of DENSO manipulator with a pneumatic handdeveloped by SQUSE (Figure 7). The hand is available in twoversions, one is operated in on-off mode, the other providesadjustable grasping force controlled by flow of air. Thecompany also exhibited a sandwich making system where aMOTOMAN MH5 robot with a unique slice-like hand. Theflat hand creeps in under slices of ham and cheese to scoop upand places them on slices of bread. It was amazing to see thedexterity of the hand to scoop up thin sliced ham and cheeseto produce sandwiches. The company claims that it canhandle even sol/gel substance, such as mayonnaise sauce,melted cheese, etc. in maintaining the original form. Thehand is developed by Furukawa Kikou.Mayekawa Manufacturing Company, Ltd, a leadingmanufacturerofindustrialfreezingmachine,gascompressor, food processing machine, has developed theworld first pork ham automatic slitting and deboning robotHAMDAS-R (Figure 8). The first HAMDAS-R was deliveredto VION in the Netherlands. The process of separating bonefrom meat requires highly special skills and it is now verydifficult to employ skilled workers. The company hadsuccessfulexperiencewithdevelopingandmarketingchicken deboning system, based on which the companychallenged to develop automatic pork ham deboning system.The unique feature is to have automated “the slitting process”which cuts along bones with knives so that meat and bones areeasily separated. The shape of bones is complicated three-dimensional structure. As it is necessary to cut along a borderof bones and muscular tissue which consisted of complicatedshapes, workers must have mastery of skills to perform slittingprecisely.Figure 6 Fanuc parallel-link robot in actionThe use of robots in the Japanese food industryYoshihiro KusudaIndustrial Robot: An International JournalVolume 37 Number 6 2010 503508506With HAMDAS-R a basic cut-line for average thigh is presetin advance as default setting. The deboning system detectsright and left thigh of incoming legs, measures the wholelength and transmits the information to the controller which,based on the data, modifies the default basic cutting line inrestoring new teaching points for the object in question. Forthis system Mayekawa uses four 6 axis vertically articulatedrobots, Staubli RX-160HE. Mayekawa has developed theprogram that processes each teaching point to create a three-dimensional cut line like manual deboning. The brief processdescription is; the first robot picks up a pork thigh from aconveyor and loads it into the transfer system of HAMDAS-R.The other three robots make the slitting line along the boneswithknives.Thosethighsaretransferredintothemeatseparationunit that pulls out bones from the meat. HAMDAS-R processes500 thighs automatically per hour. Since no human handstouch the meat, the problem of sanitation and security of food ishighly improved.4. Robots in retailSincearestaurantinOkayamaintroducedaR2D2likerobotasawaiter in early 1990s, a number of waiter robots are installed inrestaurants. Most recently, Hajime Restaurant in Bangkokemploys four Motoman dual arm robots as serving waitersdisguised as samurai warriors. Customers order their food on atouch-screen display and their robotic waiter will whiz intoaction. The robots will deliver the food to the customerstableand collect empty dishes (Figure 9). The robots also