Robotic Flexible Food Manufacturing System (RFFMS)

传统的汤、调味汁和其他基于液体的产品制造通常依赖于基于电子和/或纸的控制系统，同时使用大型固定烹饪壶（500至3000 Kg），其需要管道和手动处理传送系统来将配料和成品从一个过程移动到另一个过程。因此，这导致产品质量变化，并导致相当大的浪费和高能量使用。奥林巴斯自动化有限公司（OAL）打算通过开发一种具有完全集成的数字化过程控制的机器人灵活食品制造系统来解决这些成本高昂的问题。在创新英国赠款的帮助下，OAL及其项目合作伙伴将设计和开发实现项目总体目标所需的技术难度和创新的软件和硬件系统。食品制造将结合OAL高度创新的APRIL（自动加工机器人配料装载）系统的开发，该系统将最先进的烹饪和材料处理技术与自动机器人配料装载相结合，使用较小的750公斤容器。该集成系统将以前所未有的灵活性生产更高质量的食品，更一致，更快，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。该系统和测试将位于霍尔比奇的林肯大学国家食品制造中心的专用食品加工大厅。

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.