Robotic manipulation of food products - a review

The food industry is a highly competitive manufacturing area, but with relatively little robotic involvement as compared to the automotive industry. This is due to the fact that food products are highly variable both in shape, sizes and structure which poses a major problem for the development of manipulators for its handling. This paper reviews the current state of development in robot manipulators for the food industry. Three main areas were covered. They are: the handling of non-rigid food products - the processing of meat, poultry fish and milking, the harvesting of food products - picking of fruits, asparagus and mushrooms, and the packaging of food products - secondary and tertiary.