Without a doubt, Fellbach, Germany-based imt robot AG is definitely one of the prime contacts for high-end automatic packaging processes. The innovative Ulixes-System, which is part of this typical medium-sized high-tech company’s range of industrial systems and services, offers a high degree of flexibility in practical use, and is designed to automatically deal with the most various product sorting, grading, packaging and custom order completion tasks.
Automatic sausage packaging
EWith its fully automatic sorting system for small sausages like wieners, frankfurters, etc., imt robot AG already createdquite a stir back in1997,given the trailblazingpioneer performance accomplished in the field of robot technology. Small sausages of the type described above are actually a simple thing: as perceived by the consumer, they mainly differ in termsof various directions in taste. But then, as “perceived” by a robot, thesausage picture is an entirely different one. For it, the robot that is, variances like white or redcolor and Nuremberg or Thuringia style are irrelevant. What counts, much rather, is the respective product’s outer structure and consistency. Because no one frank or wiener or whatever other sausage is precisely identical to the next one inshape and size, and add to that the fact that the sausage wrap, or call that casing, presents itself as a surface difficult to handle for a robot’s gripping arms. All of which boils down to the fact that automatic small-sausage packaging is nothing less than a highly complicated processing step.
Scoring and industry-wide first, imt robot AG of Fellbach near Stuttgart, southwest Germany, succeeded in automating this heretofore manual work, translating its R&D achievement into practical industrial workfloor reality.
Intelligent robots
The intelligent robot system was named “Ulixes”, after Odysseus, the ingenious hero of the ancient Greek saga. And as stated above, it was in the year 1997 that a Ulixes-controlled sausage sorting unit was used in actual practice, with a German discount retailer putting it into operation. With that inaugural run not even a decade ago, the automatic sausage sorter has meantime even been exhibited inthe Museum of Applied Arts in the German city ofCologne. As should go without saying, the applicability of the system’s underlying technical principleis not limited to sausage products alone. “The Ulixes technology can principally be used wherever there is need for high-end packaging processes”, explains Frank Hack, chief of distribution and marketing at imt robot AG. Continuing his explanation, Hack points out that it is particularly in the field of packaging operations which, due to their inherent complexity, could thus far only be accomplished by manual labor, that this automatic handlingcapability assumes a highly important role. Terming it differently, Hack states that his company’sUlixes technology had closed one of the last remaining gaps between manual work and full automation.
A gapless automatic process
Intelligent robots, as developed and implemented by imt, are currently being used in the food and consumer goods industry as much as in pharmaceutical plants. The Europe-wide largest marketer of knowledge-based robot systems has meantime clearly expanded beyond the domestic marketplace, reaching a point where deliveries go to customers in more than ten different countries. Just recently, the company supplied a factory in Bedford, Ohio, USA (asubsidiary of pharmaceutical corporation Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH) with two complete packaging equipment systems. Back to thefoodstuffs end of the business, imt robot’s “Pack2Snack” system, capable of sorting small sausages and potato salad into a tray, making for a ready packaged and ready-to-eat retail product, turned out to be a powerful attention-getter at the most recent “Interpack” packaging industry exposition in Hannover, Germany.
Anyone watching a Ulixes-controlled robot system doing its job, can actually not help but get the impression that this machine does possess a human brain. An impression which may not be altogether wrong in terms of appearance; but then, it is of coursea logistics PC which doubles as the “human” brain, so to speak, and which guides and controls thework processes in an intelligent manner. Finishedsausage products moving along at random or chaotically, if you will, on the conveyor belt are sized by what looks like an insect’s tactile antenna – the robot’s arms, that is – at a rate of some 120 cycles perminute, in order to be sorted and grouped properly. In the final step that follows, the pack-filling robots take over to place the previously sorted products inside their packaging film wrap, welding it for secure closure. A large-scale Ulixes system can process up to 45,000 sausages per hour. Elaborates Frank Hack: “The innovative approach being that, instead of going forindividual programming, we operate with softwaremodules which, in turn, are parametricized inaccordance with the specific task requirements theymust fulfill.” Of equally decisive importance is the use of cameras along the conveyor belts, because itis in the short period of time between sensoric registration of the product moving on the belt and therobot’s gripper arms taking action, that the “system’s brain” plans and implements adequate handling.
In terms of hygiene and sanitation, imt robot systems are also far superior to manual work stations and conventional packaging lines, as explained by the factthat the gripper arms’ fully automatic cleaningprocess is integral to the operating process. What’s more, these knowledge-based robot systems even fulfill quality control functions, such as checkingvacuum packaging units, for example. It is particularly in the food and pharmaceutical production fields where absolute freedom from germs and optimum hygiene and sanitation must be one hundred percent assured – and where this additional robot feature also translates to an important cost cutting aspect.