SMART 2 ( Sandwich Making Autonomous Robotic Technology 2 )

SMART 2（三明治制造自主机器人技术）是价值5000亿美元的工业即食食品行业从低工资、低生产率的手工行业向高科技、高工资、高生产率行业转型的一个里程碑式项目。速食食品和冷冻食品行业面临着一场生存危机，因为它们再也负担不起或维持不了成千上万的低成本手工工人，这些工人目前在英国、欧盟和北美为他们的产品（三明治、汉堡、披萨和沙拉）储存新鲜原料。由于目前的机器人技术（硬件和软件）无法识别、挑选和放置多孔、可变形、大小和形状不规则的物体，因此该行业无法复制人工组装原料。在过去的24个月里，工业机器人解决方案公司在埃塞克斯大学创新园区的食品实验室开发了一种高度创新的机器人硬件和软件解决方案，名为SMART（三明治制造自主机器人技术），并获得了专利。它已经开发出一种抓手，可以始终如一，卫生，精致地挑选和放置任何新鲜成分（蛋白质，蔬菜，水果和沙拉），并使用高度创新的视觉系统，可以从配料箱中挑选任何成分，并将其精确地放置到容器中，无论是一片面包，一个圆面包，一个包裹或披萨底座。它现在已经建立并反复测试了一条12个机器人生产线，可以完全自动地以与人工操作员相同的速度和精度组装三明治，但成本只是人工操作员的一小部分，预计制造商将能够在生产率和盈利能力方面取得显着提高，因为它不受低成本人工劳动力的限制。他们是英国领先的三明治制造商之一，他们正在与IRS合作，以便在他们自己购买IRS机器人之前在他们的工厂测试IRS机器人生产线，然后在全球范围内展示解决方案以产生销售。

SMART 2 (Sandwich Making Autonomous Robotic Technology) is a milestone project in the transformation of the $500bn industrial ready food business from a low wage, low productivity manual industry to a high tech, high wage, high productivity industry. The ready meal and frozen food industries faces an existential crisis because they can no longer afford or maintain the hundreds of thousands of low cost manual workers that currently deposit the fresh ingredients that go into their products (sandwiches, burgers, pizzas and salads) in the UK, EU and North America. The industry has been unable to replicate the manual assembly of ingredients because current robotic technology (hardware and software) is unable to recognize, pick and place objects that are porous, deformable, and irregular in size and shape.Industrial Robotic Solutions has over the last 24 months developed and patented a highly innovative robotic hardware and software solution to this problem called SMART (Sandwich Making Autonomous Robotic Technology) from its food lab at the Innovation Park at the University of Essex. It has developed a gripper that can consistently, hygienically, and delicately pick and place any fresh ingredient (protein, vegetable, fruit, and salad) and using a highly innovative vision system can pick any ingredient from an ingredient bin and place it precisely onto a receptacle, whether a slice of bread, a bun, a wrap or a pizza base.It has now built and repeatedly tested a 12 robot production line that can fully and automatically assemble sandwiches at the same speed and accuracy as manual operators but at a fraction of the costs with the expectation that manufacturers will be able to achieve significant improvements in productivity and profitability as a result of being untethered to the availability of low cost manual labourSMART 2 is a collaboration with Around Noon, who are one of the leading manufacturers of sandwiches in the UK who are partnering with IRS in order to test the IRS robot line in their factory in advance of acquiring it themselves and then demonstrating the solution globally to generate sales.