RTS puts cost-saving robotics "In the bag"

An innovative new robotic solution to automate the handling of hot ready meal pouches is promising cost-savings and higher throughput for food manufacturers, together with improved quality and safety

RTS has combined vision technology with high-speed pick and place robotics for the handling of cooking pouches to develop a system capable of achieving a return on investment within two years.

The production process comprises a filling line which fills cooking pouches with product, water and flavourings.

The sealed pouches are then flash cooked under pressure in a retort with super heated steam, cooled and packed, either for the chilled cabinet or for the freezer.

By deploying robots at three points in the process, the solution eliminates an unpleasant and sometimes hot manual operation and achieves much quicker and more consistent throughput.

Firstly, in the precision handling of uncooked pouches, secondly, for stacking heavy and sometimes hot stainless steel trays and, lastly, another picking and placing robot unpacks the trays to place the pouches on the conveyor leading through to the cartoning line.

Said Etienne Croquette, UK Manager for Food Manufacture: "This is an exciting development for anyone involved in ready meal production.

As well as the continuous picking speeds, there are no health and safety issues with hot product and the robots work at a constant rate throughout the production day.

In fact, each robot will replace a minimum of two people per shift, so it is possible to calculate rapidly the saving on labour costs as the base level for estimating the return on investment".

In picking and placing the pouches, the high speed pick robots integrated with vision systems are able to select individual filled and sealed pouches at speeds of up to 120 per minute from the incoming conveyor.

At this stage, a quality inspection of the pouch is possible, for instance to check the depth of the pouch using 3D vision..

The pouches are then placed in precise locations on perforated stainless steel trays to allow even flow through of steam and cooking.

They are held in place by the tray fitted above them.

A heavier duty 6-axis loading/unloading robot assembles the trays precisely into stacks ready to be loaded into the retort.

After the cooking cycle, it de-stacks the hot trays.

Using magnetic grippers, the process is much more gentle than the average human stacker operating in the same conditions, so expensive trays can have a prolonged life.

Similar conditions found in bakeries have extended the tray life from six months to more than two years.

A third pick-and-place robot removes the cooked pouches from the trays, and places them in pre-determined positions on the conveyor belt which will transport them to the cartoning operation.

By integrating all three robot operations using proprietary modular software, RTS has developed a system that can be tuned to the production speeds required, negating the need to deploy extra personnel on the line to meet changes in demand.

The system can be used to switch rapidly between different products and the robots can easily be adapted to handle other containers, such as pots, just by changing the grippers.

Downtime for changeovers is minimal; any timings for cooking can be pre-programmed.

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