agROBOfood success story: cabbage in the hands of a robot

At the ERF, Daloon’s presentation on the Cabbage-bot showcased the newest technology application in vegetable processing. The Cabbage-bot utilises sophisticated AI technologies to optimise cabbage handling in food production. Overwhelming amounts of cabbages pass through the production line daily, requiring tedious and repetitive labour effort. Previously, the operators had to move around 20 tonnes of cabbages each day manually to decorate and prepare the cabbages for use. The previously existing processing machines created overwhelming amounts of waste due to their inability to work with the size and weight variations in the processed vegetables. This meant that no existing technological solutions had any real potential to relieve the human operator’s workload and humans still had to perform large amounts of monotonous tasks. Daloon created a collaborative robot inside a food-grade skin designed to work alongside the operator and use deep learning and advanced computer vision to detect, place and decore cabbages regardless of their size, weight or shape. The AI allows the robot to perform the same tasks as the operator with a similar footprint. In combination with its compatible size, the robot can be easily employed in existing production facilities and work 24/7, relieving the operator’s effort. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCkhi7z6XB8 

Cabbages come in a large crate and are sorted manually by the operator who then moves them through to a processing machine for core removal. 

Using the insight from the operators Daloon had developed a more efficient procedure leaving the production layout almost unchanged. The robotic tool with its vision system can handle a great variety of cabbages incorporating quality control into the process. 

The future of the food industry 

Through innovations like the Cabbage-Bot, agROBOfood is successfully challenging the existing notions about robots in food production. Thanks to the innovative food-grade skin developed during this project, Daloon has proven that collaborative robots can in fact become an inseparable element of food production. Furthermore confirming that computer vision and AI have tremendous potential in organic image processing as the technology is able to delicately handle food using correct grippers. This project has exceeded expectations related to the speed at which collaborative robots can be implemented under regular operations of the agrifood industry and agROBOfood is enthusiastically looking forward to their future projects.

How can agROBOfood help you?

Our community of EU robotics projects improves collaboration between European robotics DIHs with a mission to strengthen the competitiveness of the European robotics market. We represent 5 projects from 4 application areas: DIH HERO (healthcare), RIMA (infrastructure inspection and maintenance), agROBOfood (agri-food), TRINITY and DIH2 (agile production). For more news and updates from our community of projects, follow RI4EU on LinkedIn and Twitter and subscribe to our newsletter.