Robotic Flexible Food Manufacturing System (RFFMS)

传统的汤、酱汁和其他液体产品制造通常依赖于电子和/或基于纸张的控制系统，同时使用大型固定烹饪壶（500至3000Kg），需要管道和人工处理传输系统来将原料和成品从一个过程移动到另一个过程。因此，这会导致产品质量的变化，并导致相当大的浪费和高能耗。奥林巴斯自动化有限公司（OAL）打算通过开发具有完全集成的数字化过程控制的机器人柔性食品制造系统来解决这些昂贵的问题。在英国创新基金的帮助下，OAL及其项目合作伙伴将设计和开发技术上困难的创新软件和硬件系统，以实现项目的总体目标。食品制造将结合OAL高度创新的APRIL（自动化加工机器人配料装载）系统的发展，该系统将最先进的烹饪和材料处理技术与自动化机器人配料装载技术相结合，利用更小的750公斤容器。集成系统将以前所未有的灵活性，更一致和更快的速度生产更高质量的食品，大大减少了原料浪费和能源成本，同时减少了50%的工厂空间。该系统和测试将在位于霍尔比奇的林肯大学国家食品制造中心的一个专门的食品加工大厅进行。

Traditional soup, sauces and other liquid based product manufacturing often depends on electronic and / or paper based control systems whilst using large stationary cooking kettles (500 to 3000Kg) requiring pipe and manual handling transfer systems for moving ingredients and finished product from process to process. Consequently, this leads to variable product quality and results in considerable waste and high energy usage. Olympus Automation Ltd (OAL) intends to address these costly issues through developing a robotic flexible food manufacturing system with fully integrated digitised process control. With the help of an Innovate UK grant OAL and its project partners, will design and develop the technically difficult and innovative software and hardware systems required to achieve the project’s overall objective. The food manufacturing will incorporate the development of OAL’s highly innovative APRIL (Automated Processing Robotic Ingredient Loading) system that combines state of the art cooking and materials handling technologies with automated robotic ingredient loading, utilising smaller 750Kg vessels. The integrated system will produce higher quality food with unprecedented flexibility, more consistently and faster with greatly reduced ingredient wastage and energy costs, whilst taking up to 50% less factory space. The system and testing will be located in a dedicated food processing hall at the University of Lincoln’s National Centre for Food Manufacturing at Holbeach.