Robots Set to Dominate the Food Industry

Robots to Dominate Food Industry As the presence of robots across many sectors worldwide grows and their effectiveness in business processes increases daily, companies are gaining a better understanding of their importance in the food and beverage industry. Although many food producers today still rely heavily on manual labor and semi-automated equipment, investments in this area are reflected directly in the figures. Data from the IFR 2022 World Robotics Industrial Robots Report shows that only 3 percent of global industrial robot installations are for food and beverage applications, while in automotive this ratio stands at 23 percent. However, the changing trend reveals that global robot installations in the food and beverage sector have grown at an annual rate of 12 percent from 2016 to 2021. In the United Kingdom, 164 of the 2,054 industrial robot installations in 2021 were in the food and beverage sector, representing 8 percent overall and well above the global average. Teoman Alper Yiğit, General Manager of FANUC Türkiye, who states that adoption of robot technology will improve the face of food production for both primary and secondary processing and packaging tasks, shared insights on changes that will occur in food production lines by 2033.

Yiğit, saying that cobot usage will increase in the near future, continued as follows:

"Lightweight and easy-to-use cobots are becoming increasingly popular, especially in food factories where space is limited. With their extremely compact and base dimensions no larger than an A4 sheet, they easily fit into crowded areas such as loading/palletizing environments while being able to work alongside people. For example, our FANUC CRX-25iA, which we developed, has a payload capacity of 25 kg and a reach of 1,889 mm. As FANUC, we continue to expand our cobot range, and in the future we expect to see cobots with increasingly higher payload capacities and longer reach distances to cope with rising customer demand. While some individual processes in a food factory are already automated, in most cases people are still needed to transport products from one stage to another. Robots are in an ideal position to help in these scenarios. Packaging is another traditionally labor-intensive area. There is now a clear trend toward using robots to package materials into trays, trays into boxes, and boxes onto pallets, thus freeing employees to perform higher-value tasks. In the future, food factories will increasingly resemble automotive factories and robots will perform most manual handling tasks. Additionally, the use of autonomous robotic vehicles for transporting inventory in warehouses and for loading/unloading will increase."

More advanced and precise with vision systems

Yiğit, noting another area mature for automation is quality control, spoke about AI-powered camera inspection systems and robots in the field: "Robotic visual inspection systems using artificial intelligence and machine learning can help accelerate production lines by detecting product defects quickly, accurately, and reliably. This technology can also be used for sorting and classifying products like potatoes. Repetitive, manual tasks like these are ideal to be completed by AI-assisted vision-guided robots and can help employees move more freely. Finally, at this point today, robots are leaving the factory and helping address labor shortages in the fields. Trials are already underway with robots mounted on tractors and combined with a vision system to examine crops in the field. They can assess the growth/maturity stage and then harvest the fruit or vegetable when it is ready for harvest. In the future, we expect to see far more of these applications in agriculture and food sectors."