Authors: Anne Berlan, Manickavasagan Annamalai, Matthew Castro Chiaravalle, Semara Niemiec, Xuhan Shu, Aparajhitha Sudarsan, Jacqueline Fountain
Identifier: CSBE21911
Download file: https://library.csbe-scgab.ca/docs/meetings/2021/CSBE21911.pdf
Published in: CSBE-SCGAB Technical Conferences » 5th CIGR and AGM Quebec City 2021 » Regular Sessions
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Description: Plastic foreign bodies are common occurrence in the processing of beef products. Unidentified plastics might lead to severe food wastages, health hazards to consumers, food recalls or even larger product liability claims. Therefore, these plastics must be identified and removed at the early stages itself such as slaughter and butchery.
The most common sources of plastic in the primary processing stage include nitrile gloves, vacuum seal bags, conveyer pieces and pins from carcass ID tags. In general, plastics are challenging to detect due to their varying densities, sizes and chemical compositions.
In this project, a conceptual design for computer vision based plastic removal system has been developed to identify and remove from the meat processing line. The detection mechanism consists of a vibrating conveyer belt, six RGB cameras, transparent conveyer belt and artificial intelligence based detection algorithm. The removal mechanism contains an automated retractable conveyer and robotic arm to remove plastics of different sizes when signaled by the detection system.
The position of RGB cameras has been arranged in such a way that the scans capture even micro size plastics at any location on the conveyer system. Plastics with surface areas smaller than 100cm2 will trigger a retracting conveyer belt, allowing the affected meat to divert onto a reject line for manual inspection. Plastics with surface areas greater than 100cm2 will signal a robotic arm for pick and place removal of the contaminant for immediate removal.
Given that the sorting arm technology has not been experimentally determined to be effective in removing small pieces of plastic from moist surfaces, the sorting arm will only be utilized on pieces of plastic that are larger than 100cm2. This makes it possible for larger plastics, such as whole gloves, to be removed safely and effectively without deferring the removal for later manual inspection. This automated plastic detection and removal system is only a conceptual design and has yet to be evaluated in a beef processing plant setting.
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Date: 2021-06-11
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Conference name: 5th CIGR International Conference and CSBE-SCGAB AGM 2021, Quebec City,QC, 11-14 May 2021.
Session name: Food 4 - Quality
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Publication type: Presentation
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Coverage: Canada
Language 1: en
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Rights: Canadian Society for Bioengineering
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